


Dweller on the Threshold

by Nemo_the_Everbeing



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Abstract Mention of 'Fire Walk with Me', Albert Audrey and Denise Go on a Road Trip, Albert Being a Badass, Attempts at Lynchian Levels of Weirdness, Audrey Being a Badass, BOB Being Himself, Black Lodge, Body Horror, Canon Character of Color, Canon Gender Queer Character, Canon Typical Violence, Fanon Gay Character, Gen, Harry's Poor Coping Mechanisms, Just sort of a Blanket Warning for Canon Typical Horror, Philip Gerard Has a Name, Possession, Psychological Horror, Resolution for the Final Episode, Series Spoilers, Some mention of canon relationships, White Lodge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing/pseuds/Nemo_the_Everbeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On April 3, 1989, Audrey Horne turns up at the Philadelphia FBI field office looking for Albert Rosenfield.  She has a story to tell, a business card, and a request for assistance.  Over the next few days Albert discovers supernatural science projects and the reason why even forensic specialists should keep up their firearms training, Denise Bryson has a car and the will to use it, the Bookhouse Boys really ought to subcontract more, and Harry Truman has a serious problem on his hands:  </p>
<p>BOB is out, and eager for fun.  He wears a smile; everybody run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [my_daroga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_daroga/gifts).



> Huge thanks to my amazing beta, who not only helped improve this story immeasurably, but did so in days and with no complaint. You are truly an amazing person, and there would be a great deal more suck in this story if not for you!
> 
> And to my_daroga: Happy Holidays! I hope there's enough possessed!Cooper in this story to fulfill your wishes!

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

The glass front doors to the Great Northern Hotel was shut and bolted.  The side doors were sealed, the power was cut, and everyone had been evacuated thanks to Audrey's cool handling of the staff. Inside, Albert Rosenfield stood alone in the darkened lobby, a tranq gun in his shaking hand.    

Harry Truman stood just outside, watching Albert with a tight lack of expression to cover up how worried he had to be.  Albert was worried enough for both of them, but he didn’t mind someone else contributing; it guaranteed they’d never run out.  Twin Peaks’ own Dudley Do-Right had refused to be the man inside, and with good enough reason Albert couldn't argue the point.  Hell, everyone had perfectly good explanations for being unable to go. After all the excuses were made there had been no one left except Albert and Audrey Horne, and there was no way in hell a schoolgirl was going to face off with a murderer when there was a law-enforcement professional to take her place.  He might be a forensic specialist who had never discharged a weapon in the line of duty, but he'd be damned if that made him back down from doing his job. 

Albert squared his shoulders and wiped any trace of hesitation from his face.  It wasn't the ideal situation, but the man inside did have to have utter control over himself, or at least the ability to compartmentalize like nobody’s business.  Albert might not be the cold-blooded reptile of Harry’s implications, or the asshole of his own invention, but when it came to taking his emotions and stuffing them down a dark hole where they could never be found, Albert was second to none. 

At Harry’s side, angular face set and grim, was Denise.  She was a steadying presence, her gun drawn and her eyes fixed on Albert.  Albert knew he had a friend in her, acquired unwillingly as all his friends were.  Her grip on her gun was white-knuckled and her lips tight.  Albert met her gaze and gave her a nod.  After a moment Denise returned it.  Behind Denise, Audrey stood. She'd worn Albert's coat all the way from the sheriff's station and clutched it around herself in tight fists, but she dredged up a smile when she noticed his attention. It was a sham smile, tight at the corners and at odds with her stiff posture.  Albert wished she’d stop approaching everything she felt from a ninety-degree angle.  It wouldn’t make her happier, but she’d know where she stood in the world.

Then again, maybe a little self-delusion wasn’t such a bad thing.  After all, Albert had locked himself in an empty hotel with a psychotic spirit possessing the body of the best man he knew.  Said psychotic spirit had already taken apart countless lives, and Albert had nothing more than grit, six tranquilizer darts, a fluttering sensation in his gut, a Taser, and a vague sense of nausea.  Deep down he knew he was an idiot, that even in his arrogance he had to admit the peril of this endeavor.  But this was the solution—the only solution, save a bullet to the head.  And that was not acceptable.  He stared Audrey in the eye until he felt the queasiness subside.

Self-delusion would have been fucking fantastic.

He gave her one curt nod, looked over the others (he hadn't bothered learning the names of either the army major convinced he'd been abducted by aliens or the lady who toted around her own firewood) and then turned his back on all of them.  He could no longer afford to dwell on thier concern.  He had to focus on the problem at hand: Cooper.

Had he known that Albert would be the one to come after him?  It certainly defied his own comprehension, and that was difficult to do. Yet in spite of not being a fool, in spite of having a far better idea of what he was walking into than was good for his state of mind, Albert had come.  Truman was outside.  The deputies were outside.  Denise and Audrey, who had come so damn far with him, now stood outside.  Even the Twin Peaks mystic quilting circle stood outside.  And inside the Great Northern, Albert was completely without backup.  If Gordon didn’t have him written up for this, then it was only by the grace of God and deafness.

“Night’s not getting any younger,” he whispered to himself, and thought he heard the rustle of wings somewhere behind him.  He closed his eyes, centered himself, and started walking.


	2. Chapter 2

\--------Philadelphia, April 3, 1989, Three Days Prior--------

Albert Rosenfield was not a stupid man.  If he had to categorize his intelligence, he would in fact place himself in the ‘brilliant’ category.  ‘Genius’ implied certain eccentricities he was unwilling to claim, and so he would settle for brilliant.  With a side-order of ‘no one better in the field’. 

He was, however, exhausted.  It had been an all-nighter in Seattle processing the last of the Twin Peaks evidence and a red-eye back to Philadelphia for collating with proper equipment.  Then the local boys had found a quadruple homicide and needed those bodies processed.  Albert didn’t do anything to curry favor, but this was the job.  Of course he had done the autopsies.  How else could he guarantee that the case would be as airtight as possible?  Trust some other agent who might or might not have an MD?  Not a chance in hell.  Not even for some hillbilly methamphetamine killings.

His fingers were only just beginning to thaw after an extended period in too many abdominal cavities, all chilled by the cooler and reeking of just a bit too much time in a warehouse before discovery.  Thank God for word processors.  Even white letters on an obnoxious blue screen beat going through roll after roll of correctional tape while his fingers remembered how to follow basic commands.

He heard a knock at the door.  He didn’t bother looking up.  Not many people knew he was back in Philadelphia, and of that group there were only two with whom he would voluntarily converse.  Cooper was undergoing some sort of vision quest over in Twin Peaks, last he’d heard, and if it had been Gordon he would have heard him coming.  The rest of the Philly agents were universally sides of beef with handguns and two brain cells amongst the lot. 

“If you have something to run by me, you can wait,” he said to his screen.  “Otherwise, I’m not interested in lunch, dinner, or breakfast.  Whichever it happens to be right now.”

“A late lunch.  Maybe dinner,” said a voice that definitely did not belong to a testosterone-fuelled tank engine.

Albert looked up over the monitor.  There, standing in his doorway, was Nancy fucking Drew with bobbed hair, a plaid skirt, spectator shoes, a pink cardigan, a messenger bag, and crazy eyes.  All of which absolutely justified him in asking, “Who the hell are you?”

She bit her lip.  She was swaying slightly, and Albert had a definite moment of concern in which he was convinced she would pitch over.  But instead she tripped forward, holding out a business card.  He got a decent look at it and realized it was in fact _his_ business card.  He turned it over and any comment he might have had died on his lips.  On the back, in instantly recognizable, bold handwriting, were the words ‘Philadelphia Field Office; AR can help’.

Albert felt the strangest sense of clamoring panic before he fought it down in favor of a numb sort of calm.  Apparently Nancy Drew hailed from Twin Peaks.  “I wasn’t aware that backward burg lacked phone service,” he said.  “I have to assume it was some sort of catastrophe, some flood or natural disaster that led him not to pick up a phone and call me himself.  But that begs the question once again: who the hell are you, and how did you come by this particular card?”  He looked up and met the girl’s gaze. 

She didn’t look away.  He gave her some grudging respect for that.  Instead she sat down, prim and focused in on him in a way that belied the strange dreamy feeling she’d been giving off since she came in.  “My name is Audrey Horne,” she said. 

“That’s half my question answered.”

She stared at him.  The moment stretched and Albert started to feel uncomfortable.  He was willing to believe there was something in the water of Twin Peaks that bred them crazy, but this was a bit much even for him.

He hated that he was the first to look away, but damned if he was going to spend the evening in a staring contest with crazy-eyed Nancy Drew.  “Catastrophes happen, Agent Albert Rosenfield of the Philly Field Office,” she said, and brushed back her hair.  He noted the neat line of stitches, and supposed he’d reached the outer bounds of what this small-town girl categorized as a catastrophe.  “As for the card, it was given to me by a _special_ agent.”

Albert struggled to find something glib and nasty to say, something so sharp it would cut through the rising tide of worry.  This wasn’t like Cooper.  He called when he needed something.  In extremis he had Diane call.  He never sent some stranger for Albert.  He knew Albert.  He knew how such an action would be received.

“While I myself hold certain reservations regarding the tender loving care of the United States Postal Service, I’ve never considered turning to the School Girl Express as a viable alternative,” he rasped.  His throat was dry, but all he wanted was a cigarette.  Little Miss Horne would just have to put up with it.  He fumbled out his pack and lit up, catching her eye as he did so. 

She was looking at the cigarette with a very familiar longing.  He knew the general consensus about young people and cigarettes.  He also believed in free will, self-determination, and goddamned self-gratification.  It was certainly more reliable than hoping for someone else to gratify you.

He offered her the pack and she took a cigarette in slender fingers.  He rarely had opportunity to light a woman’s cigarette.  It made him feel simultaneously like Humphrey Bogart and an idiot.  Audrey seemed happy enough, and settled back to look disreputable.  He wondered if she’d ever set the trashcan on fire in her school bathroom.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll play along for now.  What am I supposed to be helping you with, and why isn’t Cooper here asking me?”

Audrey looked down at the cigarette in her hand.  “Have you ever noticed the way the smoke curls?” she asked, her voice distant.  “I wonder why it does that.”

Definitely a citizen of that happy burg known as Twin Peaks: looking like she was ten minutes out of a sock hop and sounding like she was ten different flavors of batshit insane.  Albert had roughly no time to indulge the eccentricities bred in that town on his best days, and this day was shaping up to be spectacularly unpleasant.  “Did you have a message,” he asked, “or did you just come here to smoke my cigarettes and contemplate the universe?  Because I’ve got reports to write, funeral homes to contact, and agents to terrify, and I don’t find your meandering oddness to be even remotely appealing.”

Her eyes flashed up to meet his, flat and hard as a bird’s.  “I don’t know what he wants me to do here, Agent Rosenfield,” she said, matter of fact and laser-focused.  For a second she reminded him so much of Cooper it made him dizzy.  But then her eyes dropped, she took a shaky drag of her cigarette, and she was absolutely not the man who should have been seated across from him.  “He wasn’t … something bad has happened to him.  Something bad enough he was willing to ask for my help.  Bad enough he told me to run.”

“He what?”

Audrey wouldn’t look at him.  She was rolling her cigarette between her fingers.  Albert didn’t like dealing with witnesses.  He was well aware his strengths did not lie in any areas that required him to interact with people this side of death, and even when he was in the field he let other agents take point when it came to public relations.  The idea of having to draw this particular witness out was baffling and irritating. 

And also necessary.  He tried to imagine what sort of cataclysm would have caused Cooper to enlist this kid, let alone send her all the way to Philadelphia to get him.  Why her and not Truman or one of his lackeys? 

It was Albert’s turn to stare grimly at his cigarette.  The smoke curled in delicate patterns as various molecules in the atmosphere collided at random with the particulate tobacco, altering its trajectory along unpredictable pathways. 

Which had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.  Albert frowned and said, “Look, it’s okay.  You got here fine, and you can tell me what happened.  If I’m supposed to help I need to know what happened.”

Her voice was soft, almost lilting, when she started to talk. 

~~~~

The world was a funny place, painted all over in candy colors and blood and shadow.  Every time Audrey thought she’d finally figured out how to navigate her way through it something awful happened and taught her otherwise.  She’d been tripping her way through High School, hearing all the secrets whispered in the stalls of the girls’ room and next to the lockers.  She’d felt like she had everything under control.

Then Laura died—was murdered.  She rolled that word around in her head like a pebble.  Murdered.  She drew it out when she said it, giving it the same intonation she’d heard in old black and white movies.  Murdered.  Like something incredible had happened.  And really, it had.  People didn’t get murdered in Twin Peaks.  Not until Laura cracked the whole town wide open and such terrible things started pouring out.  All the secrets and lies. 

Audrey had liked the mystery of it all, had liked the handsome agent in her hotel who treated her like an adult and saved her when she’d gotten herself in too deep at One-Eyed Jack’s.  He’d never looked at her like she’d done something wrong by going there, by chasing down her lead.  That was another phrase she liked to roll around in her head.  It made her feel like a private eye sitting in a smoke-filled office waiting for a femme fatale to walk through the door.  Even though her investigation had gone so hideously wrong, even though she’d spent a week afterwards shaking and desperate and exhausted and trying to ensure her father didn’t know even a bit of what she was going through, Special Agent Cooper had treated her with nothing but respect.

They’d drifted apart.  She couldn’t pinpoint a single reason why.  They hadn’t fought the way she saw friendships break in school.  They hadn’t had an earnest discussion the way she’d seen on television.  Special Agent Cooper, the bright spot in her foggy life, had just faded.  Yet another reason the world was a funny place.

( _“I’m not here for your life story,” Agent Rosenfield said.  “If you could find your way to the point of this charming anecdote, I’d take it as a courtesy.”_

 _It occurred to Audrey that Agent Rosenfield was far less pleasant company than she was used to from the FBI.  Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to call him ‘special agent’.  That was something, in her opinion, that had to be earned._ )

The day it happened was the day she was discharged from the hospital—

( _“Hospital?”_

_“There was an explosion.”_

_“Of course there was.”_ )

She was wearing the sweater and skirt someone had left at her bedside along with her messenger bag and wallet.  The sun had been brighter than she’d remembered, shining out of a clear blue sky.  It was a pretty day.  That was how she’d known to be wary.  Audrey had always suspected the worst from pretty days.

She got a funny feeling when she realized she had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one waiting for her.  Her father’s unconsciousness had outlasted her own.  She’d gone to his room, but couldn’t muster anything but a distant regret. 

Pete Martell had been different.  Also unconscious—no, comatose—after the explosion, Audrey had lingered in the doorway to his room.  She liked him.  She looked at him and remembered fishing in the moonlight, Pete an easy and funny companion.  She wished she had a fish to leave on his bedside table. 

She’d slipped out before the nurses could find her standing there, and walked down the streets without a single person looking like they knew who she was.  It left a sort of lightness in her chest, a jump and catch behind her heart, and the taste of ozone in her mouth.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so free.  Definitely before Laura died, but even then she’d had her family, her brother, and the distance between all of them to think about.  Now?  Now there was maybe her family, but she was certain they didn’t really care if she vanished forever or not.  John was gone, if he had ever been there at all, all superhero sweet memories and nothing tangible to keep hold of.  There was the Stop Ghostwood project, but that was over, wasn’t it?  Ghostwood’s money was gone.  She’d heard whispers that the man she’d seen come into the Savings and Loan right before the explosion had been the silent partner in Ghostwood, and that Catherine Martell didn’t have the money to tear those old woods down without him. 

Audrey paused along the sidewalk before the boarded-up windows of the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan.  It had made so much sense to go in there, to take a stand for something that mattered.  Now it just seemed like the situation had resolved itself.  That her own act of civil disobedience hadn’t done anything but give her thirteen stitches under her hair and four days asleep in the hospital.  She could still hear the tinnitus of the blast.

No, that wasn’t right.  The ringing wasn’t a quiet and constant tinnitus; it was getting louder like something was coming toward her.  She turned and realized the sound was buzzing out from the Savings and Loan.  She was pretty sure tinnitus wasn’t supposed to be directional.

She looked up and down the street.  There was no one there, or at least no one paying attention.  She walked up to the door.  The lock was shattered, the wood scorched.  She had survived that.  She had come out, when the poor manager hadn’t.  She touched the knob, but the door swung open without her having to push.

The room was gutted, girders drooping down and papers scattered and burned everywhere she looked.  The walls, made to look like marble, had been gouged so the façade showed for what it truly was: a little stone laid over plywood.  She was surprised the entire building hadn’t sagged and fallen in on itself. 

She approached the vault doors with feet that felt simultaneously heavy and like she was about to fly off the ground and into orbit.  She could feel her heartbeat under her tongue.  The barred door had been torn away in the blast, landing on top of her and shielding her from some of the debris.  At least that was what the doctors had said.  The remaining bars were twisted and scorched, and even the heavy metal vault door was blackened.  How had she ever survived?  Why was she all right when Pete Martell was in a coma, and everyone else who had been there was dead?  Was she special?  Lucky?  She ran her hand across the ash and it rubbed off onto her fingers.  It was greasy.

“This is the scene of a crime, Audrey,” she heard behind her.  “I don’t think you should be disturbing it.”

Audrey turned, and found Special Agent Cooper standing in the blasted lobby.  His expression was stern, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching. 

“I had to see it,” she said.  “I had to know it was real.”

He did smile then.  “Hello, Audrey.”

Audrey summoned up a smile.  It had been forever since they’d talked—really talked.  Since before John and Annie and everything else.  “Hello, Special Agent,” she said.

“Are you enjoying the day?”

She wondered for a second why he wasn’t escorting her out of the Savings and Loan, but wasn’t about to ask.  There was something fragile between them that she didn’t understand.  “I’m not sure yet,” she said.  “I haven’t decided if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day.”

His smile was sharper than she remembered.  “I don’t know if that’s something you get to decide, Audrey.  Good days, bad days … it’s a crapshoot, and the table just might be rigged.”

She shrugged.  “Then I haven’t figured out which one it’s going to be.”

“And everyone’s good day is someone else’s bad day.  Sometimes for the same reason.”

Something was off about him.  Not ninety degrees wrong; just a little tilted.  But it had been so long since they’d talked, and Audrey scarcely felt like the same person herself.  He was excused for being a shade different. 

“How’s Annie?” she asked. 

There was that fragile something again.  She didn’t know how to approach him now that Annie and John were gone, but still there between them.  It felt like she was right back at the beginning, like Laura had just died and this mysterious government agent had showed up in her dining room looking for coffee.  Surviving an explosion should have made her feel older, but it didn’t.  She licked her lips and said, “I heard … I heard something about her going back to the convent.”

She expected him to be distraught, or at least saddened the way she’d been when John left.  But he giggled.  Of all the things he could have done at that moment, he giggled and echoed her, his voice sing-song and all the way to ninety-degrees wrong, “How’s Annie?”  Then he asked, “How are you?” in that same tone.  “I hear you went through the fire yourself.  Did you lose any pitches?  Some people do.  Others hear them hanging around when they least expect it.  Have you been hearing all those noises you’re never going to get back?”  He stepped closer, and he smelled wrong. 

Audrey took a step back before she could think.  She had never felt threatened by Special Agent Cooper.  Of all the people in her life, he was the one she was certain was safe, who only wanted what was best for her.  He was her friend.  He’d saved her once before.

But he smelled like scorched oil, and it wasn’t the same as the ashes all around them.

“I haven’t noticed,” she said.

“Lucky,” he said.  “Very lucky.  What were you doing in here, Audrey?”  There was that giggle again.  Audrey took another step back and bumped into the vault door.  “What was a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“You heard my speech at the pageant,” she said. 

And then he wasn’t friendly at all, just sharp as knives and twice as cruel.  “Did you really think I bothered to listen?  I doubt anyone did.  Everyone is so busy these days, and one bleeding heart sounds a lot like the next.”  He chuckled.  “Mostly, they sound squishy.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  The voice was the same, but the words itched at the back of her neck. 

Then his voice dropped to a whisper and stopped even sounding like her special agent.  “You know, when I first met you I saw in your heart a true cynic.  You knew what was going on, the dirty rhythm this world moves to.  But that night at the pageant all I really remember about you is that those smarts were gone.  I have never in my life met someone who got stupider and more naïve the older they got.  I’m impressed.  If I wasn’t still getting the feel for the new kicks I’d ask you to dance.”

Audrey stole a glance toward the door.  It was a whole world away, and there was no one outside, and the man inside with her … it wasn’t Special Agent Cooper.  It couldn’t be.  Because he was good, and honorable, and the sort of man who would never do this.  And that meant that her eyes were lying, and this man was someone else.  Audrey was going to have to be brave again in the same room where she’d almost died.  The bomb wasn’t feeling nearly so dangerous. 

Pressed back against the door, her whole body shivering, Audrey forced herself to look this man dead in the eye.  Her voice nearly got stuck in her throat, but she managed to force it out.  “Who are you?”

His face split wide in a grin.  “Maybe you didn’t get stupider.”

“Who are you?”

His breath was hot in her ear and echoed even though nothing else did, and the smell of burning was all around her.  “All these reckless things you do, all the risks you take … you want to play with fire, little girl?  You want to play with Bob?”

_(“Bullshit!”_

_“You need to sit down, Agent Rosenfield.  You need to listen to me, because I almost died, and I came all the way here, and I had to take the bus.”)_

“What?” Audrey asked.  She didn’t know who Bob was, but her stomach lurched. 

Fingers touched her throat.  They were hot, like he’d been holding a mug of coffee for too long, but they were dry too.  She’d had dreams like this, but she hadn’t been afraid and it had never smelled like the world was burning up around her. 

Something inside her snapped and she ducked.  She felt the hand catch at her hair, pulling but not managing to hold.  Audrey ran for the door, her heels clattering on the floor and heart pounding in her ears. 

A hand grabbed her arm and swung her around.  Audrey stumbled and fell against one of the broken counters.  She yelped when the splintered stone sliced her palm open, then looked up.  Her special agent was still grinning, and his eyes were fixed on her bleeding hand.  “I can never get enough of that color,” he whispered.  “Hey, Audrey, what’s sweet and white and red all over?”  He loomed over her.  “You, in just a few minutes.  And you’ll never be prettier.”

Audrey tried to scramble to her feet, but his foot came down hard on her stomach.  All the air rushed out of her.  Her throat felt all closed up, and her chest ached.  She watched as that patent leather shoe moved up to her chest and then pinned her flat.

Getting air into her lungs felt like dragging something heavy.  “Please,” she said.  Her voice shook and her eyes were tearing up.  “Please, Special Agent.”

“Is this the begging part of the evening?  Are we already onto that?  Oh, Audrey, you just keep getting better and better!”

He was standing right over her, smiling down and laughing and leaning in.  His hands had soot on them.  Then her throat had soot on it.  His fingers tightened and there were spots all over her vision where there hadn’t been spots before.

“We’re going to have so much fun,” she heard, and the voice sounded so loving.

Audrey kicked out as hard as she could, right between his legs.

Special Agent Cooper let out a shocked whuff of air and fell over.  Audrey was on her feet and running to the other side of the counter.  She found a length of rebar there and grabbed it.  It hurt her hand, but she didn’t let go. 

“Audrey?” she heard from the other side of the desk.  It was a small voice, so different to the one she’d heard a second ago. 

She kept her steps cautious and the rebar raised.  They’d just see who’d gotten stupider.  Special Agent Cooper was sprawled on the floor.  “Are we in the Savings and Loan?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Why … how … Audrey, this may sound somewhat strange, but I cannot honestly remember how we got here.”  Her special agent—and he suddenly seemed absolutely like her special agent—looked scared.  She’d never seen him look scared, and that was somehow even worse than his hands around her throat. 

He reached for her, and she stumbled back.  “Don’t touch me!” she said.

“That’s what Annie said,” he breathed.  “Audrey, what did I do?  I can’t remember.  There are spaces where my memories should be.”  His eyes widened.  “Oh my God.  Did I try to hurt you?”

Audrey kept her hold on her rebar. 

“Oh my God.”  Then his face twisted into that look of determination she could remember even drugged out of her mind at One-Eyed Jack’s: the look that said everything was going to be okay because Dale Cooper would make certain of it.  He pulled a card and a pen from his jacket pocket and scribbled something on it.

He thrust it out to her, clutched between his fingers.  He couldn’t look her in the eye.  Audrey hesitated.  She didn’t want to get close, but he sounded so lost.  So different to the man that had tried to kill her.  She stepped forward once, then twice, then one more time until she could reach out as far as she was able, and could take hold of the card.

Special Agent Cooper’s fingers loosened and Audrey started to straighten up.

His fingers grabbed her wrist.  His eyes were fever-bright and his mouth stretched into a rictus smile.  “You’re all wriggling,” he said, “like mice about to get eaten.  It’s just so hard to keep a proper grip.”  His hand clutched down and Audrey whined.

She didn’t let herself think.  She brought the rebar down on his arm once, then again.  She heard something crack and Agent Cooper grunt.  He rolled away from her, arm tight across his chest, and said, “Run!”

Audrey clutched the battered card to her chest as she tried to get around him.  He started giggling.  “Run!” he called again, sing-song and awful.

The door was so far away, and he was still mostly between her and it. 

“Run!” he called out, and sounded like he was in terrible pain. 

Audrey started toward the door.

“Run!” she heard behind her, laughing and shouting and joyful.  “Run, run, as fast as you can!”

Audrey broke into a sprint.  She heard him moving behind her, but she didn’t turn.  She hit the door at a full tilt, scrabbling at the handle until it turned and she staggered outside.  She kept running down the street, only stopping when she got to the bus stop.  She looked up in a daze at the sign and the way out of town.  She had some money in her wallet, and she knew without asking that if she went anywhere to get clothes or food or anything at all he would be there, laughing and waiting for her. 

She looked down at the writing on the card. She had known not to trust such a pretty day.

~~~~

Albert sat in a daze.  The cigarette had burned down to the filter without so much as a pull, and the long line of ash made him feel queasy the way no corpse had done in decades.   He stubbed it out into the ashtray viciously, and hated the sympathy he saw in Audrey’s eyes. 

“What he said about fire,” Albert managed to say.  “You’re certain?”

She nodded, and she was starting to look impatient.  Albert gritted his teeth.  He hated it when people acted like he was the one who had to catch up, especially when what they were saying made no sense.  She said, “Before all of this, Special Agent Cooper told me that a good investigator pays attention to the details.” 

She was so focused, in spite of the meandering tendencies she had already shown.  She wasn’t lying.  She didn’t seem even a little confused.  Albert was left feeling utterly out of his depth.  He didn’t know what to say to this kid who had, apparently, been assaulted by the best man he’d ever met.  And those damned words … there was no way Audrey knew about that.  Hell, he only remembered those words dimly from the transcript of Cooper’s interview with James Hurley.  Maybe James was spreading it all around town, but it sure as hell didn’t sound like something that just got mentioned in passing.

And she had his card.  Even if he doubted her story or her sanity, she had that card with Cooper’s handwriting.  That left Albert with the sinking feeling that something horrible had happened in Twin Peaks while he’d been away.

“Look,” he said, and his voice came out cracked.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Look, I don’t know why you’re here.”

She gave him the impatient look again.  He really hated that look.  “I’m here because I was sent, Agent Rosenfield.”

“Well, good for you, sweetheart, but I don’t know why he sent you to _me_.”

Her face scrunched up in confusion.  “You mean you don’t know how to help?”

“I don’t even know what I’m helping with.”  He absolutely refused to think of Leland Palmer, driven mad by guilt and raving as though … as though there was something else in his head.  Cooper had been convinced, but then Cooper was always into that mystic mumbo-jumbo.  It didn’t mean anything.  It couldn’t mean anything.

But Cooper had tried to choke this kid and asked her about fire. 

“He said you could help,” she said.

“Why me?  Why not Truman?”  He scrubbed at his face and tried to put it together.  Cooper always had a method to his madness, and even though his madness seemed to have spiked to new and dangerous levels Albert was convinced there was still method there.  “I don’t know anything about this.  I don’t believe in this.  Throw a rock in your town and you’re bound to hit a psychic or a soothsayer, but he sends you all the way across the country to the biggest skeptic he knows.”

“Maybe you’ve got some special skill he needs.”

“I’ve got special skills coming out of my ears, but none that seem relevant in this instance.”

Audrey bit her lip and considered her cigarette.  It was nearly out.  “If you don’t _know_ anything, maybe you _have_ something.”

“Unless it’s a razor sharp wit and a certain way with words, I don’t think—”  Albert cut himself off.  He was nobody’s idea of a white knight.  That had always been Cooper’s schtick.  Occasionally Albert played the reluctant support to Cooper’s dashing hero, but Albert preferred to act as the sarcastic observer of human idiocy.  He stood apart, and that was the way he liked it.  He was pretty sure that was the way the world liked it too.  The less contact he had with the boobs and morons that constantly got underfoot and into his investigations the happier everyone was.  But Audrey had said it: he had a certain set of skills.  And he had a certain something tucked away in his desk drawer, just waiting for a complete workup at the lab.

“Kid,” he said, “you might be onto something.”  Then he picked up the phone.

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

If Harry Truman had been in the Great Northern with him (largely contingent on Harry, an otherwise excellent officer of the law, keeping his life in order and his sentiments in check), Albert would have taken the time out of his busy schedule of terror to tell him exactly what Albert thought of the plan to cut the power to the Great Northern.  Strategy be damned, Albert was close to blind in the darkened corridors.  He wanted to switch on a flashlight before he went ass over elbow, but Cooper was sure to see it. 

Which meant stumbling around in the dark trying not to shoot himself.  The gun was an unwanted weight in his hand.  He’d passed his exams, sure.  Technically he was a good shot.  Never an expert, but he was observant, intelligent and didn’t flinch.  But he understood that there was a significant psychological difference between firing on a range and firing in the field, with heightened epinephrine levels making his hands shake and accelerated respiration making him unsteady. 

But he was here, and his success was imperative.  Albert had long ago lost most of his aptitude for fooling himself, particularly where his own safety was concerned.  If he failed, Cooper would kill him and try to escape.  The best thing that could happen at that point would be if Truman and his deputies managed to dart Cooper on his way out and lock him up before he did any more damage.  Even with all the exits guarded Albert couldn’t shake the certainty that Cooper would find a way to get past them.  That he’d kill again, and Truman would be left feeling even guiltier. 

He turned a corner and swept the corridor ahead of him with movements drilled into his head years ago and left to atrophy.  He wasn’t smooth about it, or confident. 

There was no one there, but there could be someone behind any one of the room doors.  He’d cleared the first floor, and had forced himself not to jump at every shadow behind every table in the dining room.  Each piece of furniture in the lobby looked like someone crouching down and waiting for him.

He pressed a hand against his stomach.  He felt ill, almost dizzy.  He couldn’t tell if that was the adrenaline or not.

But there was only so much huddling against a wall Albert could do before he started to feel genuinely pathetic.  He pressed on, keeping his footsteps quiet and his ears straining for the slightest indication that Cooper was nearby.

What he hadn’t expected was whistling.  It was hollow, slightly out of tune, a lonely sound at odds with the big band melody.  Albert felt his breathing go shallow.  The acoustics in the hall were such that the whistling seemed to come from every direction. 

There was a brief, vicious struggle between the instinct to flee and the rational decision to push forward, but then a sudden swell of calm swept through him, ending the debate.  He’d never been in good touch with his instincts.  Rationality was always going to win out. 

“Yeah,” he said under his breath, “just keep whistling, asshole.  Easier to find you that way.”

He made his way to the end of the hall, checking one door after the next.  Each room was lit by moonlight and empty beyond some suitcases and unmade beds here and there.  It was strange to see everything left over after the evacuation, and it put him in mind of a ghost town before he quashed such a ridiculous notion as being beneath him.  Clearing the floor seemed to drag on forever, and the entire time he was accompanied by the whistling. 

He reached the end of the long hall and turned the corner to the small alcove that held both the elevators and the stairwell.  There was a figure standing in front of him. 

Albert gasped and brought up his tranq gun.  The other man did the same at the exact same moment.  The exact same …

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered, and regarded the mirror on the far wall with no little disgust.  The man in the reflection, now that he could see him in the red glow of the exit sign, was pale and slightly wild.  “Keep it together, Rosenfield.”  He rubbed his hand over his face and looked a little more composed.  He started to move past the mirror to the stairwell so he could make his way up to the third floor.

And unless he could be in two places at once, the figure with long hair behind him wasn’t his reflection.  In an instant he took in an unshaven face, denim sleeveless shirt and matted gray hair.  A teeth-gnashing grin didn’t so much light the face as split it in two.  The sketch Deputy Hawk had made off the description from Laura Palmer’s mother had been static, an old man with odd eyes.  This was something horrid.

Albert turned sharply, his tranq gun coming up and his finger tightening.  For a moment of confusion he saw another man, someone he had never seen before, equally horrid but with a teeth-baring grimace of a frown.  His hair was cropped ragged and short, his boots were covered with mud and what looked like blood, and his eyes were red-rimmed. 

The tranquilizer dart buried itself into the faux-rustic wooden wall of the Great Northern.  There was no one there, no evidence there ever had been.  Albert stared at the floor where the man or men had stood, but there was no sign of disturbance, nor was there any mud or blood.

He loaded the tranquilizer gun again.  He needed to be more careful; there were only five more syringes in the case.

He checked up and down the corridor one more time and then opened the door to the stairwell.  The sound of whistling drifted to him through the still, stuffy air of the Great Northern.


	3. Chapter 3

\--------Twin Peaks, April 5, 1989--------

There comes a point in a man’s life when he has to admit that there might be something wrong with his town. Harry Truman liked to think he was practical, fair, and an all-around decent guy. The sort of guy people would elect sheriff and feel good about afterwards. Likewise, he always wanted to think that the community he served was equally all-around decent. Quiet and far away from the troubles of the world.

But being a practical man meant knowing about the back end to that goodness, that there was a price exacted for the happiness they enjoyed. And damned if it didn’t feel like that price had been coming home to roost recently.

It had been a quiet day. Granted, any day shortly after a massive explosion and an attack on a beauty pageant would seem quiet. Those left after the dust had settled were getting back to their lives, trying to find all the goodness that made the terror in the woods worth it. The doctors even said that Ben Horne and Pete Martell were likely to wake up in the next few days. Doc Hayward hadn’t yet come clean about what had happened in his house to get Ben so badly hurt, but Harry was willing to bet things were going to get interesting once he woke up.

He looked around his kitchen, but there was no alcohol in the house. Couldn’t be. Not after Josie. Not if he was going to be the man he ought to be.

So he turned on the percolator, checked on the roast, and glanced at the clock. With Annie gone, Cooper and he were almost on a level. They were both suddenly and unexpectedly alone, both dealing with their own fallout. He was all too aware of what was expected of him as the sheriff and what he expected of himself, and neither set of expectations squared with in-depth confiding or emotional revelation. Then again, the nice thing about Cooper was that Harry never had to reveal anything. Cooper just seemed to know what Harry was thinking or feeling, and he always knew what few words to say to make it seem bearable. Strange, often confusing words, but comforting nonetheless.

So Harry had invited him over to dinner. Cooper had been working long hours ever since Audrey Horne had gone missing, and Harry decided that, in lieu of any solid leads in the case, they might as well have a quiet evening while they still could.

Cooper turned up promptly at seven, just as Harry was pulling the roast from the oven. “Come in!” he called out when he heard the doorbell. He listened to Cooper’s footfalls and was so focused that he nearly dropped the Dutch oven. He grabbed it and shoved it onto the stovetop before jerking his hand back and gasping, “Damn.”

His palm was an angry red. If he was lucky it wouldn’t blister. He caught a glimpse of Cooper’s shoes stopping in the doorway and muttered, “Sorry about this, Cooper. Just give me a second. And maybe a wet towel?”

Cooper didn’t move. Even stranger, he didn’t say anything. Harry grabbed the towel himself and shoved it under a cold tap. After it was soaked through he wrapped it around his hand. He looked up and saw that Cooper was still rooted to the spot, staring at his hand.

Harry didn’t know what had happened to Cooper between vanishing in Glastonberry Grove and coming back with Annie, and he didn’t know what lingering effects he might be suffering. There had been the initial breakdown, but after that he’d seemed pretty stable. Harry wondered how much of his stability had been real and how much of it had been as necessary a façade as Harry’s own. “Cooper?” he asked.

“Were you burned?” Cooper asked, voice quiet and intent.

“It’s not bad,” Harry said. “It’ll be fine.”

Cooper shook his head and seemed to snap back into focus. “Of course,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Been a long week,” Harry said.

“You said it,” Cooper agreed. He donned an oven mitt and lifted the lid off the Dutch oven. “What are we having?”

“Pot roast. Well, it’s supposed to be pot roast. I don’t have much occasion to cook, so I can’t make any guarantees.”

“Harry, I am certain that whatever you’ve made will be delicious.”

“Well, I figured there’s only so much Double R food you can have before you want something home-cooked.” Harry grinned a little. “And just in case my roast doesn’t pan out, there’s a pie.”

Cooper’s eyes lit up. “From where?”

“Where do you think?”

“I think that there is all other food made at the Double R, and then there is their pie. And there is no such thing as excess when it comes to their pie.”

“Figured you might say that.”

Cooper lowered the lid and fixed Harry with one of those looks that seemed to see right through him. Harry managed not to squirm. “So, Harry, what’s the news on Audrey? Any leads?”

Harry shook his head. “There’re a few people at the bus station that think they may have seen her, and the guy behind the counter thinks she might have bought a ticket to San Francisco, but a girl in her late teens with dark hair is one of those things they see pretty regularly. I couldn’t find anyone who was certain they remembered her. If she did run away, she might have even been disguised.”

Cooper sighed. “She was certainly distraught enough to run away when I last saw her, and I fear that I may have said some things she misconstrued. Harry, I worry that I’ve contributed to this.” Harry saw him tense up, and his fingers beat a nervous rhythm on the metal of the stovetop close enough to the Dutch oven that Harry started to worry he wouldn’t be the only one sporting burns.

“We’ll find her,” Harry said. “We’ll get her back.”

Cooper relaxed and withdrew his hand. “I have no doubt,” he said. “I know I can’t officially request it, but if I could just have a bit of time with her once we get her back … I need to explain, or at least try to.”

Harry wasn’t so certain that was a good idea. The kid was impressionable, and carried a torch for Cooper bright enough that it could be seen from space. Cooper might well have said something to set her off, but she was pretty damned attached to the town, particularly the hotel. If what Cooper had said to her had made her run from all that, Harry couldn’t see how any explanation was going to help. More likely it would just make the situation worse. Cooper was Harry’s friend, sure, and Harry trusted him to the ends of the earth, but Audrey and all the other people of Twin Peaks were his responsibility. And protecting her, even from something that wasn’t going to hurt her, well, that was sort of his job.

Cooper must have been through hell, because normally he would know that. He would be the first to keep himself far away from a witness he might upset. Maybe Harry should try to talk to him about Annie, but he didn’t know how. Instead he heard his voice get gruff as he slipped into his job and said, “That’s going to be up to her, Coop. I’ll pass on the message, though.”

For a second something flickered in Cooper’s eyes, sharp and furious and so unlike him, but then Cooper was smiling and saying, “Of course, Harry. I would never force my presence on her uninvited. That would be wrong.”

Harry shook his head and uncovered the roast again. It had set long enough, and looked edible. As he dished it into bowls he glanced at Cooper out of the corner of his eye. The problem with having a friend who made a habit of saying funny things is that it was hard to find the line between ‘funny’ and ‘post-traumatic shock’.

Bringing up that possibility was just as hard as bringing up Annie. He could already feel preemptory embarrassment, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth. But post-traumatic shock was a more professional topic than the shambles of their love lives, and so Harry would try. “How are you doing, Coop?” he asked. “Only I couldn’t help but notice how you’ve thrown yourself into Audrey’s case.”

“I throw myself into any case I work, Harry,” Cooper said. “Unless you know something I don’t, my behavior now is not substantially different from my behavior during the Laura Palmer case.”

Two seconds in, and Harry was already backpedaling. “Nothing wrong with enthusiasm,” he said. “I’m just worried. It’s your first case since … well, since Annie left.” And hell, he hadn’t intended to bring that up. But it was out in the open now, hanging between them and making Harry feel like the world’s biggest asshole.

Cooper opened his mouth, then blinked, tried again, and looked oddly confused. After a long silence he said, “Have you ever had a dream that was so real that waking from it left you feeling cheated?”

Harry thought of Josie and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d say I do.”

“I dreamed I was talking with Desmond,” Cooper said. Before Harry could ask, Cooper went on, “Special Agent Desmond. You never met him. He went missing while working the Theresa Banks case, and I was brought in to replace him. In many ways it was Desmond that brought me to Twin Peaks. I’ve never had the chance to thank him.”

“If an FBI agent goes missing, he might not be in a position to thank,” Harry said.

“Very true, and yet I’ve felt the urge. This town has been good to me, Harry. It’s opened my eyes, my mind, and my spirit to so many possibilities, and all because of Agent Desmond. Last night I dreamed he and I sat together in the red room. We were alone. He spoke to me, his words as strange and difficult as I have come to expect from that place. I feel as though he was trying to tell me something.”

“Something about Audrey?” Harry asked. He felt like he was starting to get used to how these visions of Cooper’s worked.

Only Cooper seemed surprised, and Harry felt like he’d missed a step somewhere in this dance. “Maybe,” Cooper said. “Or maybe it was brought about by nothing more than stress and recent events. Not every dream is a prophetic vision, Harry, even for little old me.”

Harry was fine with strange moods and stranger behavior. He did live in Twin Peaks and work in his particular office. He said, “You’ve got a good point.”

He hadn’t seen any need to set the table, not with a friend, so they both ate their roast from bowls at the countertop. Cooper confirmed his suspicions that it was awfully good, although his highest praise was still reserved for the pie and coffee. Harry didn’t mind. The pie was better.

Once the bowls were set in the sink Harry busied himself with scooping the rest of the roast into Tupperware and putting it into the fridge. Cooper said behind him, “You really should let me look at that hand, Harry. No shame in it. Those burns have a way of spreading if you aren’t careful.”

Harry put away the last bowl full of dinner for the next week and turned around. “Thanks for your concern, Cooper, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how burns work.” He hissed as a spike of pain hit his wrist. When he looked down he saw that, holy hell, the burn had spread.

“It’s that cooking oil, Harry,” Cooper said, coming over and taking Harry’s wrist like he’d already asked. “It gets everywhere.”

And that made no sense. Hell, nothing in that moment made any sense even by Twin Peaks standards. Burns didn’t work like that, Cooper trusted him enough to look after his own damage, and Cooper never, never looked at a burn with such loving attention. Harry suddenly didn’t care what had happened to him or how badly in shock he was, because something was wrong and it was clawing at every Bookhouse instinct he’d had drilled into his head.

“Cooper?” he asked, strangely uncertain that was the name he should be using. But ‘Coop’ was too casual, and he’d never had the gumption to try ‘Dale’ on for size.

Cooper’s finger stroked down the crease of Harry’s palm and the hand spasmed in pain. Harry tried to jerk away, but his wrist was locked in a grip that was a lot stronger than it looked. A surge of something that damn well tasted like panic rushed up on him and he tried again with more force than he’d ever felt necessary with this man.

And then his hand and wrist were released and Cooper stood, blinking under the light. His pupils were pinpricks and his breathing was shallow. “Harry?” he asked, sounding as confused as Harry felt.

“I’m here, Cooper.”

“Harry, I … of course you can take care of yourself. Did I hurt you?”

“I’m fine. Are you okay?”

Cooper lifted a hand halfway to his head and said, “Just a slight headache, Harry.” And then collapsed with blood running out of his nose.

\--------Philadelphia, April 3, 1989--------

Her new guide might not be suave, but apparently Agent Rosenfield could still deliver a proper meeting in a parking ramp. The sun had set while they were talking, and the bulbs that kept the ramp lit were dim and yellowed. Audrey had to fight a smile in spite of the serious circumstances. They dodged around the pole blocking the entrance, and all they needed were pistols and fog and she’d feel like a proper private eye meeting a snitch.

There was a silhouette leaning against one of the columns, backlit by the light from the stairwell. She was tall, with long hair and a pencil skirt that put Audrey in mind of femme fatales. She wasn’t smoking though. She ought to be smoking.

“You know,” the figure said, with an alto that was perfect for the role, but also a bit … off, “the DEA isn’t actually just lab space for overcrowded FBI offices. We have our own cases and everything.”

The silhouette detached herself from the shadows to step out and join them. The woman was on crutches, but still managed to look graceful. Audrey caught a glimpse of her face …

Oh. Oh! Audrey remembered her as the woman agent who had visited Special Agent Cooper. Although, now that she was looking closely something wasn’t quite right about her. Audrey had a hard time putting her finger on it, but without her special agent there to distract her she could see what she hadn’t bothered to before.

And then it finally clicked. Audrey grew up in a very small town where this sort of thing didn’t happen, but of course it did elsewhere. She wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t so sheltered that she’d throw some sort of fit. Audrey fidgeted, trying to figure out how to approach someone like this. She glanced at Agent Rosenfield, but he wasn’t even looking at her.

This was some sort of test. She hadn’t known Agent Rosenfield very long, but she could see it in him: he was the sort who liked to throw people in the deep end to see if they could swim. Well, she’d show him. She could swim selkie-sleek rings around him in her sleep, and if he thought this was the sort of thing that would knock her off her stride he’d better think again.

The woman—because she was going to be a woman in Audrey’s head, since she had clearly preferred it the last time they’d met—held out a hand, palm down and dainty, as though she expected it to be kissed. “Albert,” she said. “It’s been a while. A few things have changed.”

Agent Rosenfield shook her hand. “Nothing I didn’t see coming. You’d remember that if you hadn’t fried your synapses with hairspray. Honestly, Denise, the last time I saw you, you had better taste.”

“The last time you saw me I was in menswear. That’s not taste, that’s your personal preferences showing through. I thought a good scientist disregarded his biases.”

Audrey watched them in fascination. Two colleagues trading barbed yet fond insults under a faded lamp … was Agent Rosenfield being this noir on purpose, or was it just his own ‘personal preferences showing through’? She liked that phrase. She glanced out the corner of her eye, but couldn’t see anything about Agent Rosenfield’s suit that would indicate that much of a preference for menswear.

Unless … oh. Everything shifted in her perspective as she slid that thought around everything she’d seen. It made sense. Agent Rosenfield had barely registered her as a human being, and that wasn’t the sort of reaction she usually got out of men. Even the ones who weren’t interested in her _noticed_ her. She knew the signs, and had gotten pretty good at turning them in her favor. But Agent Rosenfield had been different. He’d been curt and cold and even nasty for no reason. It made so much more sense now! She walked in, sent by Special Agent Cooper, and he’d been jealous. That seemed right, she thought. That would fit, that he wouldn’t like her if he saw her as competition.

But it didn’t really explain why he was also insulting this woman, who as far as Audrey could tell hadn’t been interested in Special Agent Cooper at all. She’d have to gather more evidence before she said anything. The last thing she wanted was to sound stupid or ignorant in front of these people. She had the feeling Agent Rosenfield would never let her forget it.

The woman, Denise, turned toward Audrey. “I’m sorry, where are my manners?” she said. “DEA Agent Denise Bryson.”

Audrey took the proffered hand and shook it. “Audrey Horne. We met once before.”

“Oh, yes we did. You were the high school girl who planted one on Cooper right in front of me.”

Audrey preened a little. It had been a bold move, and one she was still proud of. She caught Agent Rosenfield giving her the side-eye. Audrey was certain that was one point in favor of her new theory. He muttered, “If you ladies are finished with the introductions and nauseating recollections, we have work to do.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m slower getting to work than usual,” Denise said, nodding at the crutches.

“I don’t even want to ask,” Agent Rosenfield said.

“Nothing surprising. I tried to talk down a drug dealer; things got heated; I ended up with a hairline fracture to my ankle and he ended up with a lengthy prison term. Same old.”

“Your gait would be more even if you didn’t insist on wearing those heels. The boot’s enough of a fashion statement, don’t you think?”

“You don’t have a single interesting tie, and you’re lecturing me on fashion?”

Audrey snorted a surprised laugh, and Denise favored her with a brilliant smile. “I have to ask, did you convince Cooper to give you an internship?” She looked at Agent Rosenfield again. “Or has Cole finally gone insane enough to start recruiting you nuts straight out of High School?”

“Hey, I’ve almost graduated!” Audrey protested right before she realized how painfully young that made her sound. She pressed her lips together and tried to dredge up a more aloof tone. “I’m here at the request of Special Agent Cooper.”

“Internship. Good for you, though I might mention to you that the DEA has much better benefits. Trust me, that sort of thing might not seem like a big deal yet, but give it a few years and you’ll be willing to kill for a decent dental plan.” She brushed her hair behind her shoulder with a casual ease. Definitely a femme fatale. Audrey wondered if that was her real hair, or if she wore a wig. There was no good way to ask. “And where is Cooper in all this? Don’t tell me he’s still in Twin Peaks. I don’t like to judge, particularly in light of my recent experiences, but his attachment to that place seemed to border on unhealthy.”

“That’s why we’re here, Denise,” Agent Rosenfield said. “Something’s gone wrong.”

The light, mocking humor fell away from Denise’s face. She straightened up, looked around, and then used a key to open the door to the stairwell. “Come on,” she said.

They climbed up and into a large room full of cubicles. It was dark, barely lit by the exit signs and streetlamps that shone in through the windows. Denise made a turn into a stairwell without windows, so even that weak light dropped away. Audrey could see the outlines of the people with her, but they had stopped feeling like silhouettes under a streetlamp and started feeling like everything around her was melting away. She clenched her hands at her sides, because she wasn’t about to grab hold of the back of Agent Rosenfield’s coat just to guarantee he was still real.

Two days. That was all it had been. It was easy to ignore what had happened in the Savings and Loan when she had a bus to catch and the thrill of being asked to do something, to participate in a real investigation. She’d made plans on the bus all the way to Seattle, and then on the next bus going directly to Philadelphia. She’d kept making plans and coming up with some pretty clever contingencies until she’d been too exhausted to think. She’d only had enough money for the ticket (going to Philadelphia turned out to be sort of expensive), and definitely not enough for a hotel. She’d slept on the bus and scraped together enough change to pay for a sandwich, and that had been it.

She’d been running on adrenaline, determination, and the dream-like blur of the landscape for almost two days on that bus, and several more hours in Agent Rosenfield’s company. All of a sudden, in that dark hallway with no connection between her and anything but the carpet that hissed and scraped beneath her feet, she realized she was hungry and exhausted. And under the hunger and the tiredness there was something that felt like terror. She knew the way it sat in her chest and made her lungs feel heavy and full. She’d felt the same thing in One-Eyed Jack’s after her own escape attempts failed and it turned out that heroin was a much better chain than a locked door had ever been.

But then the terror had been brief—sharp flashes like lightning when she sobered up enough to really understand what was happening. Now the terror was a constant thing. She could ignore it when there were other matters to occupy her mind, but in the dark, with all those distractions far away and reality looming above her, she felt it so strongly she wanted to scream. Special Agent Cooper, her special agent, had attacked her. There was something wrong with him, and it was all up to them to stop it. What if they failed? What if the thing that was wrong with him—that made him act like someone else entirely—what if it wasn’t alone? What if there really were things in the dark, just beyond what she could see?

Right when she was about to give in and grab Agent Rosenfield, embarrassment or not, his voice grated out of the darkness. “Is all the cloak-and-dagger necessary, Denise?”

“You’re in here without official sanction, about to use one of our labs. ‘Favor for a friend’ isn’t actually the iron-clad explanation my supervisor would want for this sort of thing.”

“Or you’ve just got a dramatic streak and like to see us stumbling around in the dark.”

“To be fair, I can only hear you stumble.”

“How far is it?” Audrey asked, pleased that her voice remained largely quaver-free.

Both of the other voices paused, and she wished they wouldn’t. After a second that felt like an eternity of things crawling all over her, Denise said, “Just a few more flights.”

Audrey stuck close all the way up the stairs. There was a hall once they left the stairwell, which seemed wonderfully bright even though it was still streetlamp-dim, and then they ducked through another door. Before Audrey could work up more fear over the pitch-darkness that greeted her, the lights finally turned on. She blinked, watching the afterimages chase across her vision like clouds. She used to reach out and try to catch them.

When her sight cleared it was like science class all over again: a lab covered in drab linoleum, filled with machines and even a few computers. There were cabinets with labeled jars and tubs and bottles, and a big yellow cabinet with the symbol of fire on it that made Audrey feel queasy. She stayed on the other side of the room from that one.

Agent Rosenfield made for one of the machines, but Denise stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Stop,” she said. “Explanation first.”

“We don’t have time.”

“You’re in my lab, illegally using my equipment. The least you owe me is an explanation as to why. You said Cooper was in trouble. Start there.”

Agent Rosenfield compressed his lips, and Audrey could see the argument coming. “I’ll tell you,” she said before they could start. “He would just be telling you what I already told him anyway.”

Denise looked between them and then said, “Fine.” She let go of Agent Rosenfield’s arm and told him, “But you owe me one. Get to work.”

Agent Rosenfield gave a jerk of a nod, then went over to one of the machines. When they’d been at his office he’d pulled a little bottle from his desk in an evidence bag. When he got to the machine he put on gloves, opened up the bag, and pulled out the bottle. It was the sort that insulin came in: completely sealed with a rubber top. He picked up a syringe from the lab table, stuck it through the rubber, drew out some of the liquid, then set the bottle down and injected the syringe into the top of the boxy machine.

Audrey had nearly flunked chemistry, so she had no idea what any of that meant. She wasn’t even that interested. She wanted to know what the liquid was, sure, and why he had decided that was the help that Special Agent Cooper needed. Agent Rosenfield hadn’t told her; he hadn’t really said much of anything. He’d complained about the weather and the other drivers and the pedestrians on the way to the DEA office, but he’d never once said something that would let Audrey crack past his surface. In spite of her theory about him, she didn’t know anything for certain. Agent Rosenfield might as well be made of stone.

She turned to Denise, who was still waiting for her to explain. Audrey felt a little funny getting caught staring. She was just tired, and her mind was wandering farther and farther. Closer and closer to Twin Peaks. Audrey clenched her jaw, gave Denise her very best customer service smile, and then launched into her story again. She stared out standing up, but by the time she was done she had sagged against one of the paper-covered counters. She felt the paper crumpling under her hand. There was something underneath it that was soft, like padding. Some part of her wanted to peek, to focus on that one little mystery instead of something that really mattered. Was that why Agent Rosenfield had spent so much time complaining about little things? She looked over at him. He was bustling from table to table. He didn’t stop moving.

He was scared. Audrey knew it was true. And it wouldn’t help if she told him that she was scared too, because he wasn’t that sort of person.

Denise was eyeing her when Audrey’s attention finally meandered back. “What?” Audrey asked. “That’s what happened.”

“I believe you,” Denise said. “I was just wondering when you last slept. Or ate. I don’t suppose the genius over there thought to give you a granola bar before the two of you came over.”

“I don’t need people taking care of me,” Audrey said, but her stomach gurgled. She frowned down at it, the traitor.

“But you wouldn’t turn down a granola bar, would you?” Denise asked, light and teasing. Audrey felt an elbow bump her arm and looked up. Denise had settled in next to her and produced a granola bar from her jacket. Audrey tried to eat slowly and maintain her cool, but it was gone pretty quick.

She looked up to find Agent Rosenfield fiddling with knobs on the box. A printer attached to it rattled to life and fed out a few sheets of dot matrix paper. He tore off the sheets and started looking over whatever results he got.

“References are on the shelf,” Denise called over to him.

Agent Rosenfield said nothing, but went over to the bookshelf and pulled out something that looked like a textbook. Audrey slumped and tried not to fall asleep.

“Not a chemist?” Denise asked her.

“Flunked it. I liked the clandestine meeting in the parking ramp part of this investigation a lot more than I do the homework.”

“Well, listen to you, Sam Spade.”

“I love those films,” Audrey confessed. “I’m going to be a private detective, you know. I realized that in my hospital bed after I almost got blown up. I can’t save the world. Most of the time I can’t even save myself. But I’m good at getting into trouble, and I’m good at finding other people who are in trouble. Mostly who have put themselves there. I know what to say to get them to cooperate with me. They’re just desperate to believe someone is going to pull them out of the fire.” She knew her customer service smile had weakened to something shivery and small. “Sounds like a private detective to me.”

“I guess it does,” Denise said, and Audrey couldn’t tell if she was mocking or not.

“When I do become a private investigator,” Audrey said, not looking at anything in particular, “I’m going to go somewhere no one knows me, like New York or Chicago or Saint Louis. Somewhere I can start fresh. Somewhere where none of my cases ever involve someone I know. It’s really hard to maintain a good professional distance when you’re afraid your friends are going to get hurt.”

Denise made a sympathetic noise. She’d probably seen her own share of difficult cases and injured friends. Maybe even dead ones. Agent Rosenfield scribbled something on a piece of paper. Audrey kept her eyes open. Barely.

“You know,” Denise said, “you aren’t the first person to pull an all-nighter in here while waiting for results. There’s a cot in the corner. Shouldn’t have too much drool on the pillow.”

Audrey looked over to the rickety army cot with its thin, cheap mattress and airplane pillow. It was the very nicest thing she had ever seen. She stumbled over to the cot and dropped onto it, glorying in being horizontal for the first time in two days. Since the hospital bed.

A week ago this all would have been some distant dream, or impossible nightmare. Or both, really. Because it was awful but also wonderful. She was finally out of that town, finally doing what she had always wanted to do. But something was wrong with Special Agent Cooper, and that wasn’t the investigation she’d dreamed of, no matter how many femme fatales they met under dim lighting. She squeezed her eyes closed and listened to the shuffling of pages and the precise click of Denise’s heel, followed by the soft thump of her boot.

“Albert,” Denise said quietly. Audrey wondered if she thought Audrey couldn’t hear, or was asleep already. “The way that girl described Cooper sounds like he’s on something nasty. Is this a sample?”

“No, it’s … it’s actually very difficult to explain.” For the first time, Agent Rosenfield didn’t sound angry. He just sounded tired. Audrey clutched the scratchy blanket in her fist and wondered when she’d started finding his irritability comforting.

“Try me,” Denise said.

“How much did Cooper read you in about the Laura Palmer murder?”

“Background only. I was there for the drugs case, so I heard all about the sting operation over the border and the rescue of the girl, but no more about the Palmer case than what pertained to my own investigation.” There was a brief silence. Audrey wondered what they were doing, but before she could crack an eye and look she heard Denise say, “Oh! I never knew which girl he’d pulled out of One-Eyed Jack’s. She’s in this neck-deep, isn’t she?”

Agent Rosenfield made a noise that Audrey couldn’t interpret and she heard his pencil start to scratch again.

“Albert, why is she here?”

The pencil stopped scratching. “What was I supposed to do, Denise? Cooper sent her, and the kid went through a traumatic experience. I am not the person to help her with that, but nor am I about to leave her alone in an empty office. Credit me common sense if not empathy.”

Denise snorted, then said, “So tell me.”

“Tell you what? Why I can’t believe you would conform so far to gender stereotypes that you would start to wear hose? That can’t be comfortable over whatever cast or brace they have you in.”

“They’re as comfortable as anything else, and you’re avoiding the question. Tell me what’s happened to Cooper.”

“Fine,” Agent Rosenfield said. “Were you briefed on the resolution of the Palmer case?”

“The father did it.”

“Yes and no.”

“Explain.”

Agent Rosenfield sounded stressed. “You know I don’t subscribe to the hocus pocus many of those in my given department do, correct?”

“You are a bit saner than the rest of your colleagues, yes. But only in that respect.”

“Then you will understand that it is not lightly that I say I saw things in Twin Peaks I have difficulty explaining.”

“Difficulty?”

“Cooper wouldn’t be the first, or even the second man in Twin Peaks to suddenly display what appears to be two very different personalities. And what he said to Audrey about playing with fire? It’s not the first time that exact phrase has come up in the investigation either. My current hypothesis—and I have to use that word with a great deal more hesitation than I prefer—is that there is some sort of parasite that exists in Twin Peaks. Maybe a microorganism, although I don’t want to speculate that far. I have to assume that Cooper was infected through his contact with Palmer, and no, I don’t know why it’s taken this long to manifest.”

“Albert, the sort of behavioral replication you’re talking about is more than just aggression triggered by fried synapses. This is specific words and phrases. That’s … that’s a long way from meningitis.”

“It’s either that or there’s a ghost in Twin Peaks that calls itself BOB and has somehow managed to possess the best man I have ever met. You’ll forgive me if I lean toward a slightly more scientific explanation.”

Denise sounded gentle enough Audrey knew she was about to say something awful. People always sounded nicest when they were about to say terrible things. “Albert, I don’t want to be the one to say this, but both of us know there is a simpler explanation than either an extremely specific parasite or a ghost. I like Cooper, I really do. He’s never treated me with anything but respect and the utmost professional courtesy, and in my position that’s a big thing. But you and I both know Cooper has never been completely right. Doesn’t it make more sense that—”

“No.” There was something mountain-steady in the sound of that single syllable. The whole world felt like it had been sliding all around Audrey, never holding still enough to touch. She moved through a mist of people and places and events, but none of them had grounded her. Not even Special Agent Cooper, although his sort of mist had sent her giddy spinning, which was as much as she’d ever wanted. She was used to her foggy, swirling world, but when Agent Rosenfield said that word he was rooted to the spot, crystallizing everything around him. “Dale Cooper is many things, and I would be the first to say that he is not what most people would consider normal. But he is not insane, and he is not about to attack a young woman. And if that’s ruled out it leaves a microorganism, and one which, for reasons unexplained, this drug can counteract. If you’re unable to accept that, I’ll finish my synthesis and leave.”

“Oh, stop being such a confrontational asshole.” Denise was quiet for a minute, and then started speaking again. Her voice was soft. “I let you come in here and use my equipment, and Cooper’s in trouble. I don’t know what sort of trouble, and for the moment I don’t have to. But you’re crazy if you think I’m letting you and Audrey run off with nothing but your Taser to protect you.” She snorted. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you don’t own your own car, and you probably don’t make the sort of money that’s going to let you just buy two plane tickets on the fly. I’ve got some vacation time coming, and I could think of a lot worse ways to spend it. The boot’s on my left foot, so I’ll even do most of the driving.”

“Thank you,” Agent Rosenfield said, sounding gruff and faint. Audrey could hear his pencil scratching.

“Someone’s got to look after you. Although I’ll admit I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we could find somewhere to put Audrey while we went to Twin Peaks. No matter what happened, she was attacked. I don’t like the idea of putting her back in that situation.”

“She’s not going to be back in that situation, Denise. But I’m fairly certain she’s a minor, and probably has people who are worried about her. It would be a bit awkward if we drove all the way across the country and didn’t bring her back with us. Once we’re there, though, I’m all for granting her as much protection as possible. Even from Cooper.”

“You think the local law enforcement will help? They seemed all right to me. A little close-minded, but no more than usual.”

“If you’d asked me that a month ago I would have laughed. A few weeks ago I would have said that they were to be trusted without hesitation. Now … let’s just say that the sheriff is a good man, but his personal attachments cloud his otherwise excellent judgment. I don’t think he’d put Audrey in danger if we asked him to protect her, but I wouldn’t mind us being on hand just in case.”

“Like I said, Albert: what are friends for?”

They settled down. Audrey wasn’t thrilled they didn’t think to include her in the discussion, or that they viewed her as something that had to be protected without even considering that she could look out for herself, but she was used to both those states of affairs. People always thought that she was too young, or just too odd to make her own choices. That someone else needed to do her thinking for her, and that she should definitely be sheltered from all the nasty things in the world.

But nasty things came calling even if you were careful. Bombs went off even when you were attempting peaceful protests. Friends could turn violent without a moment’s warning. She huddled deeper into the blanket. With her story laid out twice, and words like ‘attacked’ and ‘trauma’ hovering over her, she didn’t know what to think. There was a stubborn part of her that clung to the idea that her special agent hadn’t hurt her; it had been an imposter, something that could be chased off so everything could be right again. But deep inside she knew that things weren’t so shiny-perfect in this world. That her judgment could be flawed and her confidence could prove unfounded. What would she do if Denise was right, and her special agent had attacked her without anything forcing his hand? What would Agent Rosenfield do? She didn’t know either of them well enough to predict. Outside Twin Peaks the world was an alien place full of unfathomable people, and now she had to put her trust in two of them she’d barely met.

But they had believed her, and they had promised to protect her. Even if she didn’t need or want that protection, she couldn’t help but acknowledge that they were standing on her side against someone they had known for years. Audrey curled deeper into the cot. The future moved. It twisted and turned and never showed the same face twice, but here in a lab all the way across the country from her troubles, with two people who believed her, she was safe.

The pencil kept scratching. After a few moments, Agent Rosenfield said. “There are compounds here I can’t identify. All of them, in fact, but Haloperidol.”

“That’s a comprehensive list of pharmaceuticals.”

“My Rf values don’t agree with your assessment.” He sighed. “I’m going to need to use your centrifuge and instrumentation for H NMR.”

“Centrifuge is on the table. And the NMR apparatus is—”

“Could it be the gigantic cylinder in the corner?”

“If you don’t want my help …”

“Just get me a comparison spectrum for Haloperidol so I can eliminate it once we start getting results.”

“I forgot what a joy it was working with you, Albert. Always a pleasure to be your minion.”

Audrey listened to the whir of machinery and the scratching of pencils and the flipping of pages. It really was just high-powered homework. She had an almost Pavlovian reaction to that much concentrated science, and what had been faking sleep to eavesdrop became more and more like real sleep.

Right before she slipped under she heard voices from far outside her cocoon of scratchy blankets and barely-there cushioning. “You did the right thing,” Denise said, “bringing her here. You’re a good man, Doctor Rosenfield.”

“If you could take a moment away from your soppy sentimentalism to perform a flame test on this plug I would take it as a kindness.”

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

The second floor had been cleared with nothing but the sort of deep shadows that scraped Albert’s nerves raw. He wished Cooper would just show himself and be done with it. Then Albert could dart him and his life could go back to what it was supposed to be: labs, casework, and the not-so-occasional ignoramus who needed to be reminded that evolution helped those who helped themselves.

The third floor was, as far as he could tell, virtually identical to the second. More endless wooden hallways filled with endless wooden doors. He had to check each damn door, the master key sliding in, turning, and then a thrill of pure terror as he swept the room and checked each darkened corner.

There was a strange state between terror and boredom that Albert had reached about a half hour ago, ever since his close encounter with a mirror. Even the whistling had gone silent, and the stillness around him made him start at every unexpected creak of a floorboard or gust of wind. Every now and then he could swear he heard footsteps or muted laughter, but he didn’t altogether trust his perceptions at that point.

Albert leaned against the wall and lowered the tranq gun. His arm ached. His head was pounding. It was the situation: it was dark, and he was afraid, and his training for this sort of thing was over fifteen years out of date. Of course he had a headache.

He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

“It’s going to be okay, Agent Rosenfield,” he heard.

Albert jerked away from the wall, wrenched upward in panic. He swung his tranq gun around, and that was definitely not a reflection standing before him. His finger tightened on the trigger right as he heard a high-pitched shriek.

He jerked the gun to one side right as he fired and the dart buried itself in a doorjamb. His pursuer had flinched back against the door itself, her own tranq gun clutched in her hands and her eyes screwed closed.

“Audrey?” he gasped. There was a creak of floorboards above them. Albert scrabbled for the case in his jacket pocket. Only four darts left.

He felt Audrey clutching at his sleeve. “He’s right above us, isn’t he?” she whispered.

Albert finally slid the dart into the gun and cocked it. He looked up into Audrey’s wide, frightened eyes. “What exactly gave you the impression that I have time for either idle speculation or pointless questions?” he hissed. “Who the hell let you in here?”

“I did.” She held up a key. “I live here.”

“I bolted the door. Even if you had a key, you shouldn’t have gotten past that.” Even as he said it, he realized what she’d done. “Can I ask which deputy was stupid enough to let you past?”

“Does it matter?”

“I prefer to shout at the right people. A dressing-down of this magnitude should be earmarked for the truly deserving.”

“I’m not going to tell you just so you can shout at someone. All you have to know is that he never actually saw me, and I made sure everything was locked up tight once I was in.”

“And you didn’t bother mentioning you had a master key?”

“You were going to have to talk to the front desk staff to evacuate the building anyway,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I should bother.”

“Or you intended to come with me the entire time.”

“Not the whole time,” she said.

He was really not in the mood for her crazy puppy eyes. “You have to leave. Whatever the hell we’re up against has already expressed an interest in taking a bite out of you, and I am not about to see that happen.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “I know you didn’t want me to be bait, but BOB gets sloppy when there’s something nearby he wants. Maybe he wants you, maybe he doesn’t, but we know he wants me. I ought to be the bait.”

“Like hell you should.” Albert cast a glance toward the ceiling and then said, “Audrey, in my job I spend a lot of time coming to a scene too late. I’ve seen more murder victims, suicides, and random acts of fatal brutality than you can imagine.” He couldn’t meet her mad-lucid gaze. “I already spend too much of my time knowing exactly what my colleagues will look like after any conceivable death. Don’t confirm the accuracy of my speculations, kid. Just go.”

Her hand had gone butterfly-light on his arm, and her tone was sad but determined. “It’s not your decision, Agent Rosenfield; I have to be here.”

Albert snapped his head up to glare at her. “As the law enforcement professional in this hallway, it actually is my decision.” She had set her jaw and he tried a different tact. “Do you think Cooper could forgive himself if he hurt you, even if he wasn’t there when it happened?”

That might have actually gotten through to her. “I want to help,” she said.

“I’m not going to tell you that you can help best by giving the others moral support, because I would personally find it extremely annoying to be relegated to that role. So the only help that you could be right now is to give me one less thing to worry about.” She wavered, and he gritted out, “Please.”

“You know, ‘please’ is such a manipulative word. It only exists to make people feel obligated to do what you want them to.”

“Then please feel obligated.”

She hung her head and the tranq gun dangled at her side.

He sighed. “Where did you even get that?”

“I borrowed it,” she said, sullen.

“Do you even know what it’s loaded with?”

She shrugged. God save him from people who didn’t bother informing themselves about the weapons they carried. This was how death by misadventure happened. She said, “Horse tranquilizers, I think. Maybe bear. I know it’s not that compound you made, and so it won’t do what you really need it to do, but it’d probably slow him down. That could help.”

Albert didn’t say anything. He saw the defeat on her face. He’d consider feeling relieved, but if Cooper really was right above them he couldn’t be anything other than desperate to get her out of the hotel as soon as possible.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“I’m not thrilled about it either, but by process of elimination I’m the only one who can be here. Go on. Get yourself safely out of here before all hell breaks loose.”

She gave him a sad, faraway smile that left him feeling disturbed. He had to chalk it up to Audrey’s off-kilter sentiments in this particular atmosphere. “I think I’m getting used to being turned down by FBI agents in this hotel. Give me a few more decades and I might even be okay with it.” Her hand lifted from his arm, and he felt goosebumps forming where it had been. “Please be careful.”

“I certainly have no intention of getting sloppy at this point.”

Audrey nodded and left. It looked as though she melted into the darkness. Albert shook his head and cast his gaze back to the ceiling. If nothing else, Audrey’s appearance had steadied his resolve. He didn’t delude himself into certainty that she would leave. She wasn’t that predictable. If she did stay, lurking in the shadows hoping to help, Cooper would find her the second he made it past Albert. And that was fucking unacceptable. Albert firmed his grip on his tranq gun, made certain the new dart was loaded properly, and continued his sweep.


	4. Chapter 4

\--------Twin Peaks, April 5, 1989--------

Harry stared at Cooper’s unconscious body laid out on the couch. He didn’t know what to think, but he sure was thinking. Something was up. Something big, and Cooper didn’t seem like he was as with it as he ought to be. Harry glanced at his burned hand, and then at Cooper again. What had that been? Was that what Audrey had seen? Was that why she’d run?

Well, Harry Truman was just a simple lawman. He knew when he was in over his head, and he wasn’t so proud that he would insist on going it alone. He picked up his phone and dialed Hawk’s number. Hawk picked up on the second ring.

“Hawk,” Harry said, “what are you doing right now? I need help.”

Harry swore he heard the snap of a book closing over the line. “What do you need?” Hawk asked.

“I …” and then he was at a loss. What did he need? Cooper was acting spookier than normal, but how was Hawk supposed to help with that? His instinct was to relocate Cooper to the Bookhouse and figure out what to do from there.

When he didn’t figure out what he needed after about ten seconds Hawk said, “I’ll be right over. Do you need anyone else?”

“No. Not … not yet.”

The line clicked. Harry stared at the handset, then at Cooper. Should Harry call anyone for him? Cole or Diane? No, it was one thing to be appropriately cautious, particularly in his town, but that was too much. He wasn’t about to get Cooper in trouble with his boss or his coworkers just because he was acting a little hinky. Harry would wait, see what he saw, and then make a better decision.

After a few minutes he threw a blanket over Cooper and checked his temperature. Harry hissed then whisked the blanket off him. Cooper was scalding hot. It dawned on Harry, and he started laughing at himself. Cooper wasn’t affected by the Lodges or the woods; he just had a hell of a fever! He probably had no idea what he was doing or saying, and that was why he’d been so unlike himself.

Harry busied himself packing ice into a plastic bag and then wrapping it in a towel. He would have called off Hawk, but Harry figured he was already on his way. Oh well, he could help Harry bundle Cooper into the car if it got much worse and they could take him to the hospital. And if not, Hawk could help Harry wrestle Cooper into a proper bed. Or as proper as the somewhat musty twin in the guest room could be. Harry considered taking the twin himself, but he hadn’t washed his sheets in a while and that seemed like a step too far.

The doorbell rang, and Harry opened it to find not only Hawk, but Big Ed standing on the stoop. “I figured ‘not yet’ might change while I was driving,” Hawk said by way of explanation. “Seemed prudent to take precautions.”

And damn, but this was more than a little embarrassing. Harry scratched the back of his neck. “Actually, fellas, it did change, but it got a lot less urgent.” He led them into his house and they surveyed Cooper’s unconscious sprawl with the calm acceptance of Bookhouse Boys.

“Drunk, punched out, or just tired?” Big Ed asked.

“He was acting strangely, then passed out in my kitchen. I thought … hell, I don’t know what I thought. But he’s got a fever. Pretty sure he was delusional. May have been for days.”

“You think that’s why Audrey Horne took off?” Hawk asked. He’d been firmly in the camp of her being a runaway since the beginning.

“Starting to look that way,” Harry said.

“He tell you anything about it?” Big Ed asked.

“Nothing concrete. Like I said, he was pretty out of it. Got fascinated by my burned hand.”

Hawk homed in on his injury. “You got burned?” he asked, stance shifting the scant inches into defensive.

“Pot roast,” Harry said, and Hawk relaxed.

“Well, you want us to help you get him to a bed?” Big Ed asked. “Or were you thinking he should go to the hospital?”

Harry tried to smile at them, but it was weak. After everything he’d been through, as unreliable as he’d been for a little while there, here were these two men who would still do anything he told them. Damned if he wasn’t the luckiest guy in the Pacific Northwest.

“Oh, I think I’ve overreacted enough for one day,” he said. “Let’s see how he does with a proper bed and some Ibuprofen before we cart him off to Doc Hayward.” Or Doctor Jacobi, he thought to himself, but he wasn’t about to betray Cooper enough to say that aloud.

Big Ed took Cooper’s legs while Hawk got his arms. Harry opened the doors and led the way to the spare bedroom. No one commented on the floral quilt his mother had sewn him years back thrown over the bed, or about the dinky fish mounted on the wall (very first fish he caught, and it had seemed so huge back then). They just arranged Cooper on the bed and, after a second’s consideration, got his shoes, jacket, and holster off. “Might not be a bad idea to keep his gun for him,” Hawk said. “Just until he’s back to himself.”

Harry, who was all for responsible gun ownership, still hesitated before taking Cooper’s piece and going to his gun safe. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Cooper, he told himself. It was just that no one with that sort of fever should have access to that sort of firepower. Simple practicality.

He locked up both Cooper’s gun and his own, and then went back to the bedroom. Ed had a travel bottle of Tylenol in his hand and was squinting at the label. “How much do you think he weighs?” he asked.

“More than I thought,” Harry said.

“Dead weight,” Hawk said. “A man his size, I figure he’s 175.”

“Right,” Big Ed said. “Looks like three should do him just fine. Here, tip his head back.”

Harry watched as Hawk and Ed managed to get three Tylenol into Cooper with a glass of water and a minimum of fuss. He got himself stuck between admiration, gratitude, and worry until Ed called over his shoulder, “Wouldn’t mind knowing if you’ve got 7-Up or something around here, Harry. He’s going to need more than tap water when he wakes up.”

“I think I’ve got some ginger ale in the fridge. I’ll get you a glass.”

“Much obliged.” Ed shot him a small smile. “Maybe one for the agent, too, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

Harry chuckled in spite of himself. “No trouble at all.”

He made his way to the kitchen. The Dutch oven was still sitting out, and there were ice cubes in the sink. All that had happened within the last hour. And Audrey Horne was missing. And there had been an explosion. And Josie …

Harry leaned hard against the counter. All alone in his kitchen, where no one was going to see, he allowed himself a moment to be utterly overwhelmed. As long as he kept busy he could ignore how much his life had collapsed in the last little while. He could see all the dead as a professional problem, the missing as people who might still need him to be Sheriff Truman and not Harry shaking in his kitchen. He squeezed his eyes closed and told himself to get a grip. He told himself that Ed and Hawk were waiting for him, and that one of them might come looking if he didn’t stop standing around and start doing something useful.

He reached for the refrigerator door and heard in his ear, “Josie is in the Black Lodge.”

He whirled around, but there was no one there. He shook his head. He really had to get a grip if he was hearing things now. “Come on, Harry,” he told himself. “Just get the ginger ale.”

He went back to the fridge and heard, “She’s waiting for you, Harry.”

This time when he turned to look he could have sworn he saw a fleeting shadow, a burst of movement. The hair on his arms was standing up and he was shivering. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said aloud. “Just a legend, and even if it’s got a little truth in it, everyone goes through the Black Lodge to get to the White.” ‘But not everyone belongs to the Black Lodge,’ he heard and couldn’t say if it was another voice or his own.

He clapped a hand over his mouth at the shock of pain that brought. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but he was paralyzed by the image of Josie running down a hallway with a zigzagged wooden floor and red curtains, chased by a white-eyed, screaming double. Her shadow self.

And then there came the wild thought that he could still save her. He was a good man. He could pass through the Lodge like Cooper had—go in, get her and bring her back. Even if she was like Annie and wholly broken he would be alright. Because she would be alive, wouldn’t she?

He thought of the body they’d buried, but he couldn’t convince himself that couldn’t be fixed. With so many extraordinary things happening these past few weeks, surely if he could get himself into that Lodge and walk her out, she’d just step out in her body. It had to happen that way. Any other possibility was just too damned terrible.

And once she was back, once she was alive she’d maybe heal in time. She’d maybe come back to him. All he had to do was go. Just say ‘yes’ and let the Black Lodge swallow him down.

He gasped and fell against the refrigerator. His heart was racing, and the voice in his head, so very like his, was hissing at him. Not his. Something else. Something dark and twisting and wrong in his head. He looked at the window, and through the glass he saw a mass of owls clustered in the tree outside, staring in at him.

Harry let out a shout and dropped to the floor. He heard pounding feet, and Hawk was in the kitchen in an instant, grasping Harry. The voice in his head cut off, leaving him shaking.

“What is it?” Hawk asked.

“Owls at the window.”

Hawk looked up, then back at Harry. “I don’t see any.”

“That isn’t possible. They were filling the tree. They couldn’t just—” But they had. There was nothing in his window now but branches.

Hawk was giving him the same assessing look he had whenever he was reading between Harry’s lines. Times like that, Harry knew all too well that his deputy was leagues smarter than him. “Why did you call me here?” Hawk asked. “Not the fever; you wouldn’t have called about that.”

Harry stole another glance at the window, still abandoned. “Before Cooper passed out he was different. He reminded me of … of Leland right before the end. It wasn’t him, Hawk. I mean, for short periods it seemed like him, but then he switched. He became someone else.” He hung his head. “And then he passed out, and all I could think was that he hadn’t told us anything about his time in the Lodge. Not really. Not any more than we absolutely had to know. And I respected that. I figured he’d been through enough without me prying into his personal business. But when he came over I started to wonder if I didn’t make the wrong choice, leaving him alone.”

Hawk watched him, dark eyes steady and unfathomable.

Harry went on, “But he has a fever. Practically burning up. Fever like that, a man’s likely to have delusions, hallucinations. That’s all it was.”

“You got a fever too?”

“Huh?”

“You aren’t the sort of man to hallucinate a window full of owls,” Hawk said, ever pragmatic. “Maybe Agent Cooper has a fever, but there’s something else going on here. I think we might need a different sort of expertise just to be certain.”

Harry considered the options. He could insist that Cooper was behaving oddly because of a fever, and the owls were just his own jitters getting the best of him. Sounded reasonable enough. Problem was, he’d been the sheriff of Twin Peaks a good long while and knew better than to think that reason alone was going to answer much of anything.

He sighed. “Who do you figure?”

“Sarah Palmer seems to be the most qualified.”

Poor woman might not have much else to do on a Friday night, all alone in her house. And if, by some crazy chance, this was more than Cooper coming down with a nasty bug and Harry being too stressed and exhausted to think straight, well then, she had more of a score to settle than most with the forces that existed right outside the purview of their little town.

Maybe not right outside. Not anymore.

Harry looked up at the window. Time was the strange things in Twin Peaks happened rarely. The Bookhouse Boys acted as lookouts, watching the moving dark, and always had done all the way back to when people first settled in the area. He knew the history, the strange goings-on that crept in at the edges of official town history. They didn’t get themselves noticed because it wasn’t but every decade or so that one of those happenings called attention to itself. But ever since Laura Palmer was killed everything had burst out too far and too obvious for the Bookhouse Boys to do much more than keep it as clean as possible, keep whatever infection was going around from spreading.

There were others, they knew, people who’d got themselves involved through chance or inclination. Bookhouse Boys didn’t go to those others terribly much for help. They weren’t disciplined, didn’t have the history and the consequences in their heads from years of learning and working and training. Maybe that ought to change.

“Call her,” he said.

Hawk left the kitchen and Harry finally made it to the refrigerator and poured one glass of ginger ale, then another, then another. He thought of pouring one for himself, but ginger ale never tasted right without a hit of whiskey.

He heard a muffled noise from the other room and assumed Hawk was calling Sarah Palmer. Then he heard a thump. He hurried into the other room, one of the glasses of ginger ale still in hand, and froze when he saw Cooper standing over a prone Hawk, a chair leg in his hands. The glass hit the floor and spilled all over the linoleum.

Cooper was muttering, “Come on, now. If you’d just stop being so stubborn I’d let you out more. Maybe I’d even let you sleep. But no, you’ve got to dig in your heels like you own the place. Sorry, buddy boy, repo’s here and this house is mine.” He stopped and then looked up slowly at Harry. “I found him on the ground,” he said, in some semblance of innocence.

“Who are you?” Harry asked.

“Same Dale as I always was,” he said.

“No.”

Cooper laughed, and it wasn’t quite right, setting Harry’s heart hammering away in his chest. “Okay,” he said. “I admit, I might have hit him. I don’t know what came over me. I’m dizzy all the time, and I have such strange thoughts.”

“You’ve got a fever,” Harry tried, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. Delusions would have been one thing. Hell, if Cooper had come at him with the chair leg accusing him of being General Custer, he probably would have felt well justified in believing that the best thing for Cooper’s mental state would have been some pills and an ice bath. But Harry knew a liar when he saw one; every word slipping out of Cooper’s mouth was a lie, and a deliberate one.

And that was a whole different kettle of fish.

Cooper was still grinning. “I do, don’t I?” he asked. “Practically burning.”

If he wanted to play it that way … “Yeah,” Harry said, “that’s right. So how about you put that chair leg down and we get you to the hospital, huh? Pretty sure that fever’s beyond Tyleonol.”

“But it’s so comfortable here, Harry, and I’m sure I’ll be better soon.”

“How about we start with you putting that chair leg down so we can make sure Hawk is all right.” And Ed, he thought, wondering where the hell he was. He couldn’t help but imagine Ed in the bedroom, lying with his head bashed in.

The chair leg clattered to the floor and Harry suppressed the urge to kick it out of reach as he approached. The smoother this went, the faster he could help Hawk and Ed. He took on the same posture as he would when approaching a dangerous suspect: arms just a little out from his body, hands open and cocked up just enough so Cooper could see he had nothing in his palms.

“You act like I’d hurt you,” Cooper said.

“Well, you did just knock Hawk over the head.”

“I thought we agreed that was the fever.”

Now it was an agreement? Harry gritted his teeth and kept edging forward.

“I mean,” Cooper said, sounding conversational, “a fever is much better than any of the alternatives, right? What if I was just crazy? If I’m still me, if your judgment is just that bad, what do you do then?”

Harry glanced down at the chair leg. He could reach it, but he wasn’t completely certain he could get there before Cooper. “My job,” he said.

Cooper’s smile twisted wide. Harry heard flapping behind him, shuffling and whispering. There were fingers on the back of his neck, but he knew better than to look away from Cooper. “Look at you,” Cooper whispered. “Bookhouse Boy. And ‘boy’ is the right word, isn’t it? Little boys standing on the edge of the woods, looking out into the dark.”

“What does that have to do with a fever?” Harry asked. He was so close to the chair leg.

“I must be delusional again,” Cooper said. “I’m seeing all sorts of crazy things, Harry. I can see owls in the trees and a long, red-curtained hallway where your kitchen should be.”

“If you’re that delusional, maybe you ought to sit down.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? Ginger ales all around, and you thinking about how boring the fizz is without the burn. That’s the secret to all you people: deep down, you all want to burn. Even stone-cold control freaks like me have a little ember inside us, just waiting for someone to come along and blow them into fire. Josie did that for you, didn’t she? Made you burn. Made you reckless. I was so worried about telling you when her fingerprints came back. Albert kept pushing, but I waited until all the evidence was there. Isn’t it funny how if I’d been less concerned with your feelings, she might be alive today?”

Harry shook his head, desperate to deny what he was hearing. He’d suspected that Cooper had known about Josie days before they went to arrest her, sure. Albert had been lurking around like a bad sign, and every time Harry walked into a room he and Cooper stopped talking. But to hear it put like that, to think that Cooper’s care for him could have led to Josie’s death … “I don’t believe that.”

“But you should, Harry. Sentiment is as dangerous as a bullet. Or in this case a heart attack.”

“You shut your mouth!”

Cooper howled with laughter, and Harry saw his eyes go white. “And there’s that fire! Come on, Harry. You want to really punish dear Dale for that oversight? Let me walk out. I’ll have some fun, make sure he remembers it.”

And there was confirmation. “There’s no way I’d let you walk out of here, BOB.” There was power in the naming, but Cooper just grinned wider. Harry didn’t think his face could stretch that far. “I don’t care whose body you’re wearing.”

“No way you’d let me go? Are you certain?”

The whispers congealed into a single thready voice. “Harry?”

Harry went rigid. “Josie.”

“She’s trapped, Harry,” the thing wearing Cooper’s face said, stepping toward him with its ear-splitting smile. “She’s screaming, begging you to save her. And you can. All you have to do is turn around. I don’t have any interest in you. Not my type. So I’ll give you a once-in-a-lifetime offer: a window into the Lodge. You can reach in; you can even climb in! And she’s going to be real, Harry. Can you afford not to turn around? Can you leave her to her terrible fate? Punish the man who let her die, and save her all in one heroic swoop.”

“And let innocent people get killed.”

“Hey, I’m not even making you promise you won’t come after me once you’ve got her back. If you’re fast—if you’re as good at your job as you should be—you could get into the Lodge and right back out in no time. You could catch me when I was halfway down the street. No one would die, and you’d even get one back. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!”

“Josie’s dead,” Harry said, hating himself for even admitting it. “She’s buried. Even if I could get to her, she has no body to come back to.”

“Oh, come on!” Cooper crowed at him. “Did you forget the part where you saw Dale walk into the Lodge under his own steam? Did he leave a body behind? No! Everything in the Lodge is real, buddy boy. And anything you can manage to bring back? That’ll be real too.”

Harry tried to hold firm. BOB was evil. He was a murderer. But it was also in his best interests to give Harry something that would take him a while to accomplish if he wanted to escape. If he turned around and there was nothing there, or if it was all just an illusion he’d figure it out right away and catch Cooper before he was twenty feet out the door. BOB could try to attack him while his back was turned, but Harry was braced for that. He could trap Harry in the Lodge, but even if he did there had to be a way out. If souls passed through the Black Lodge to get to the White there had to be an entrance he could use.

And maybe, just maybe BOB was right about one thing: this was an opportunity that would only happen once. Even if it was a trap, even if BOB did expect him to get lost in the Lodge, could Harry refuse to even try and save Josie? Whatever she had done, she didn’t deserve what would happen to her there. And even if her body was lost, even if she was dead and not coming back, Harry could get her spirit out of the Black Lodge. He could set that part of her free and make a last goodbye. The sort they should have had.

Harry found himself struggling to find good reasons not to turn. “If you do kill someone, it’ll be on my shoulders.”

“And if you don’t turn around, whatever happens to Josie is on your shoulders too.”

He knew he had to do his job. He had to show this thing wearing Cooper’s face what a Bookhouse Boy could really do. But Josie was lost. Wasn’t protecting her part of his job too?

“Come on, Orpheus,” Cooper said. “Turn around.”

Harry did. For a second she was there, reaching for him. He stumbled forward, reaching toward her, ready to pull her close. His fingers twisted around hers. She was solid under his hands. He knew those fingers, those palms. He looked up and he knew that face.

“Josie,” he whispered. “Come on, Jose. Just step toward me.”

She stood, shivering, and then suddenly collapsed into him. Harry caught her, arms wrapped around her. He closed his eyes; he recognized the shape of her shoulder-blades, the curve of her spine. He might have started to cry.

He opened his eyes and found himself looking down the same red curtained hallway he’d seen her trapped in. Standing at the far end, surrounded by darkness, was Josie. She was staring at him in horror and shaking her head. Harry froze, meeting her eyes and then slowly drawing back from the embrace of her double. “Josie?” he asked.

Josie’s body stiffened under his hands, and her head snapped back. Her eyes were wide and white, just like Cooper’s had been. Her mouth opened impossibly wide as she started screaming. Harry fell backward. For a second, Josie held him, her fingers digging into his arms tight enough to bruise. Harry struggled, but he was caught, trapped. And it was clear it had been a trap all along. He should have known. He shouldn’t have given in to the urge to save Josie, or to the tiny, cruel part of him that wanted to punish Cooper. Should never have—

And then a hand came down on his shoulder and he jerked awake. Harry stared up into Big Ed’s face. How the hell had he ended up on his kitchen floor? He looked around, but Josie—both of them—were gone. The red-curtained hallway was gone. There were no owls in the window. “What …”

“You were on the ground with a knot the size of my fist on the back of your head,” Big Ed said. “Cooper woke up; took me by surprise. I figure he did the same to you.”

“No,” Harry said. “I talked to him. I … I let him go.” And there was the shame. Damn. What sort of sheriff was he if he put his own desires before the lives of his people? Didn’t matter that BOB was slick as hell, could twist your thoughts around until you were convinced he was right. Harry should have known better, should have stood his ground. His only excuse was, “He offered to let me save Josie.”

Big Ed was giving him the sort of sympathetic look that Harry knew he didn’t deserve. “Harry,” he said, “you didn’t let him go. He walloped you good, and you got knocked out. And had a hell of a dream, from the sound of it. Nothing you could do about it. Nothing at all.”

Big Ed went over to help Hawk and Harry crawled toward them. Maybe Big Ed was right. Maybe it had just been a dream, and Cooper had taken him by surprise.

“Nothing at all,” he heard Josie whisper, her voice all but lost in the sound of the wind outside.

Harry squeezed his eyes closed. Or maybe Big Ed was just the sort of good guy who would believe the best of Harry even when he didn’t deserve it.

“Harry?” Big Ed called over his shoulder. “Not sure, but I think he needs more care than I can give. Should I get him to the hospital?”

“Do it,” Harry said. He’d call Sarah Palmer after they were gone. He could have really used Hawk’s knowledge of the Lodges at that moment; it was a hell of a lot better than his own. But without Hawk, all he could figure was to call up the one woman who had more experience with possession than anyone else in Twin Peaks. Damned if he knew what else to do.

\--------Somewhere Near Lake Michigan, April 4, 1989--------

Audrey woke up in a haze of cigarette smoke, with the feel of a coat folded up under her head and a rough blanket thrown over her. She was also pretty certain the room was rattling, which was worrying in the split-second before she realized she was in a car. She blinked her eyes open. The footwell beneath her held a pair of crutches, partly collapsed. She looked out the window to see that it was light outside, though the sun was edging toward the horizon, turning the sort of orange that meant evening was coming on. “How long was I asleep?” she asked herself.

Turned out she didn’t have to answer that question. Denise said, “Almost twenty hours. Do you remember waking up and walking to the car? Or stopping a few times?”

“Not really.”

“Wow, you really were out of it.” Denise was in the passenger seat, reclined with her own jacket under her head. Her eyes were heavy, her makeup a little smudged. Her smile was drowsy. Nearly twenty hours. Was this Audrey’s life now? Sleeping like Rip Van Winkle, only to awaken to a world that wasn’t where she left it?

Audrey focused on Denise. It was easier. Saner too, maybe. She realized that Denise’s hair had become shorter and messy. A wig. Denise wore a wig, and it was gone. Audrey blurted out, “I had wondered if your hair was real.”

For a second, Denise’s poise wavered. Audrey felt embarrassment enough for both of them, she was sure. She wasn’t usually this terrible at social situations. There had been times back in Twin Peaks when she’d been playing Bobby Briggs like a fiddle and felt positively savvy. “Sorry,” she said.

When Denise’s smile came back Audrey could tell it was fake. “I don’t know whether to be insulted by the way my other hair didn’t quite pass muster, or pleased by the way it kept you guessing. And long hair is a bit of a commitment, isn’t it? Especially when there are moments it’s still useful to be a man.”

And that just made things more complicated. Audrey didn’t want to press, or put her foot into it any more than she already had, but she had this little problem with curiosity. If she was a cat, she’d have run through all her lives years ago. She tried to word it just right. “I thought … do you want me to call you …what do you want me to call you?”

“Denise.”

“So you think—I mean—you are a woman. Right?”

“Most of the time.”

Audrey couldn’t tell if Denise was being deliberately confusing to get back at her for the accidental insult, or if Audrey simply wasn’t following something she ought to be able to. “I don’t understand,” she admitted, ashamed.

Denise’s fake smile settled into something a little more real. “Most of the time I’m Denise, but there are moments, maybe increasingly rare moments, in which it’s not bad at all to be Dennis.” She shrugged a little with the shoulder not pressed into the seat. “Everyone likes to think that you’re a man or you’re a woman, that you can’t be both. I honestly don’t understand why. Maybe one day I’ll change my mind, realize I want to be Denise all the time. But I don’t feel like I have to rush into it. Wouldn’t you want to be certain before doing something you can’t take back?”

Audrey said, “I’m almost never certain of anything. And more and more, it seems like I can’t take anything back.”

“Then you understand why I don’t rush.”

“I guess I do.”

Audrey sat up and found a bag next to her with a hamburger and fries. “Thank you,” she said to the back of Agent Rosenfield’s head, and then started to eat. “And thank you for your coat.”

“Don’t get sentimental,” he said, then pulled off the road into a rest stop.

“What are we doing here?” Audrey asked.

“The obvious.”

She watched as Agent Rosenfield parked, unbuckled his seat belt, and then bundled out of the car. “Does he ever explain why he does what he does?” she asked.

“Not if he can help it,” Denise said.

“How did you two meet?” That felt safer. More like colleagues chatting rather than some back-woods girl asking all the wrong questions.

It made Denise laugh. “I met him on a joint case. He was rude, abrasive, and utterly brilliant. I asked him out on a date.”

Audrey felt close to her theory again. With a little more information, she might finally figure Agent Rosenfield out. She tried to act casual as she asked, “Were you …?”

“Was I Dennis at the time? Oh, yes.”

“How did he react?”

“Completely taken aback. But he did say ‘yes’.”

Audrey felt a thrill of victory. She looked out the window again, but there was no sign of Agent Rosenfield. “I had guessed,” she said. “Not about the two of you, but about him. About the menswear.”

Denise laughed. “You’re sharp as a tack.”

Audrey smiled at the compliment. It was one thing to be told that by people in Twin Peaks, but Denise a whip-smart, professional woman in a dangerous and difficult career. That made her opinion mean much more. “So Agent Rosenfield is gay?”

“I can’t say for absolute certainty, but I have strong evidence to that effect. On our one and, might I add, only date he saw through me within a half-hour. Told me that if he was interested in women he would have married a nice Jewish girl like his mother wanted. Then he recommended a surgeon.”

“But you weren’t interested.”

“As accepting as he tends to be, Albert has a very difficult time seeing shades of gray.” Denise’s face did something funny, like she had a thought. Then she changed the subject. Maybe she was worried she’d said too much, betrayed something. “Anyway,” she said, “he might not have been the love of my life, but he’s ended up being a pretty passable friend.”

“Friendship is the best foundation for any relationship,” Audrey said, remembering Special Agent Cooper saying those words. She had parroted them back at him once, to make it easier for them both when he’d turned her down the second time. She glanced at Denise. Was it the same for her? It didn’t seem like it. She looked genuinely happy that Agent Rosenfield was her friend. Like it wasn’t anything less than she’d wanted. There was something to that expression that made Audrey wonder about the nature of friendship. She hadn’t ever had many friends, or any really. Not real friends. Just the sorts of school acquaintances she called ‘friends’ because she didn’t have a better word. So when Special Agent Cooper wanted to be friends, it felt like a cheat, like she had to settle for that sort of shallow, breathe-and-it-floats-away relationship she had with the people at school. But what if this—what Denise and Agent Rosenfield had—was what Special Agent Cooper had been talking about?

And that complicated her theory, too. It had been so simple to assume that Agent Rosenfield didn’t like her because she was competition. He’d been colder to her than Denise, but he didn’t know her, so she couldn’t guarantee that he didn’t treat everyone he didn’t know like he’d treated her.

And even if he was gay, did that necessarily mean that he was interested in Special Agent Cooper? She couldn’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t be, but Denise didn’t seem like she was, and she liked men. So maybe Agent Rosenfield and Special Agent Cooper were just friends—no, not ‘just’ friends, they were _friends_ like Denise had talked about. The real sorts of friends, who loved one another, but weren’t in love. How was she supposed to tell the difference in him when she didn’t even know how to tell the difference in herself?

As Audrey chased her thoughts around and around Denise settled down into her seat. Audrey realized she was probably trying to go to sleep. That the sun was setting, and she was the one off-clock. “You might want to stretch your legs,” Denise murmured.

“Are you telling me to get out?”

“I’m telling you you’ve still got more than twenty-four hours in a car. Might as well get up before your legs forget how to work.”

Audrey slipped out of the car as quietly as she could, taking the coat under her head with her. The rest stop was on a high bluff overlooking a massive lake. Maybe even one of the Great Lakes. The wind coming up off it was cold and she slipped the coat on for a little warmth. It was too large, hanging nearly to the ground, but it really was the perfect trench coat to stand under dim street lamps waiting for an informant. She could just see herself: worldly, blasé, totally in control. The perfect hard-boiled detective. She almost laughed when she realized who that sounded like.

“What?” Agent Rosenfield asked, joining her at the edge.

“Just thinking,” she said, “that you’d make an excellent hero in a film noir.”

“There were no heroes in film noir.”

“Good point.”

He offered her a cigarette and they both lit up.

“Do you want your coat back?” Audrey asked.

“I’m fine,” Agent Rosenfield said, but he was shivering a little.

Audrey looked out over the lake. She thought about Agent Rosenfield and Denise, and about friendship. She thought about the fact that he was rude and curt and still gave her his coat. She thought about the world being a big, complicated place.

“You don’t have to go back to Twin Peaks,” Agent Rosenfield said. “If you have somewhere you prefer, we could drop you off.”

“What are you trying to say?”

She watched as a muscle in Agent Rosenfield’s jaw jumped. “I am attempting to tell you that the situation in Twin Peaks could get very ugly, very fast. I am attempting to tell you that despite all best efforts, Cooper might not make it out of this in one piece. I am attempting to tell you that I cannot guarantee what will happen to you if you go back, nor can I guarantee it will be pleasant. I am attempting to give you some sort of choice in this situation, despite most of your options being questionable. Sue me.”

Audrey straightened up, feeling the weight of the trench coat around her shoulders. “I can’t give up on the investigation,” she said, trying out the phrase for the first time. It felt good in her mouth, like it had just come home.

Agent Rosenfield snorted. “When last I checked, you weren’t a member of the Bureau.”

“Not my style,” she said. “I can’t take orders from someone I don’t respect, and I’m pretty sure you can’t guarantee that I’d respect my … what’s the term? Supervisor?”

“Not unless you’re very lucky.”

“See? It’s just not for me. So if I’m not going to be a special agent, I’m going to be a private investigator. And that means I can’t run just because the situation is getting dangerous.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Agent Rosenfield growled. “You know what? If you want to be a PI, be my guest, although I can guarantee there are far fewer femme fatales and far more infidelity cases than you’re anticipating. But be that as it may, if that’s your dream, then by all means pursue it. But you are not a PI yet, and this is the sort of case that makes actual trained officers of the law pause. You want to get out there and see the world? You want to experience it in all its disappointments and lackluster thrills? Do that. Hell, go apprentice yourself to a PI, but no matter where you are, please don’t mistake that you will be sitting this one out.”

Audrey’s response was simple, wasn’t it? For once in her life, the answer was simple. “Special Agent Cooper is my friend,” she said. “I can’t just walk away.”

She watched Agent Rosenfield walk back to the car. His hands were buried in his pockets and his head was bent. He looked like a man carrying a very heavy load. It was funny. He complained so much that she hadn’t realized how much he avoided complaining about things that really mattered: not about her accidentally drafting him to help save Special Agent Cooper, or about staying up however long figuring out that compound and making more of it.

She shook her head. “You’re a weird guy, Agent Rosenfield,” she whispered, and the wind took away the words before she could even hear them, “but I think I like you.”

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

Oh, what a wonderful world it was. The lights were out, the world was still and dark and perfect, and BOB was out to play. He could hear the mouse scurrying, scurrying, already on his floor. He could smell the fear on him, the stubbornness that drove him on. BOB tended to prefer them young and gorgeous like that fine dish his new friend had so selfishly sent away, but sometimes he was willing to make an exception. And the terrified little lab rat scurrying about his hotel? Oh, he’d make an exception for that piece of strange. He’d paint him red and see all his insides.

He started to whistle. The new digs were particularly good at whistling, and there was a definite joy that came from repurposing an activity dear Dale had enjoyed. He almost wished he could share the moment, but Dale was slippery, wasn’t he? Every time he found out about BOB’s fun, every time BOB granted him a glimpse of the wonders he was working through Dale’s skin, he got upset. Even when BOB thought Dale was safely stowed away in the Black Lodge he seemed to find a way to sneak in. Absolutely ruined his reunion with the Horne girl. It was exhausting to wipe his memory so often, to keep up the fight.

Dearest Dale wasn’t going to interrupt this time. He was stuffed so far down into the worst parts of the Lodge he wasn’t about to come out to play. Not for a long while. Not until BOB could make him dance like a puppet on a string. Oh, and then the real fun would begin. It wouldn’t be like Leland, keeping the digs in the dark until the very end. Cooper would know everything. Even this first kill. Bob would record it in crystal clarity just for him.

It was going to be good. Dale had liked Albert Rosenfield from the moment they’d met. And Albert, well, Albert wasn’t the sort to have friends. He stood apart, thought himself better and more interesting than the people scuttling around him. But he looked at Dale like the sun shone in his eyes; it was just wonderful. Maybe Dale was Albert’s only friend in the whole wide world. That would be sweet. Even better than Laura had been. Because Laura had fought him right up until she died. She’d screamed at him, furious and defiant. Her fear had been delicious, but true despair was the best taste in the universe, and Albert was going to give it to him before the end. BOB was going drink deep that night, get all his strength back.

The scurrying stopped. Oh, but Albert was keen. Sharp as razors. Too bad that didn’t protect him against real razors. The hotel guests had left so many lovely toys, but that was BOB’s favorite. Bone handled and everything, oh boy.

BOB crept along the corridor, soft-footed and thrilled. He could smell that fear in the air, track it down. He was getting closer. The aroma was curly, strong, and glorious. He listened for the telltale patter of little feet.

Oh, there. Just a shift. Albert knew how close he was. Was he armed? Did Dale’s delightful pacifist break all those precious vows of his and bring a gun? Or was he really going to try to bring BOB down with a Taser and a bottle of pepper spray? That would be fun! Lightning along his veins and fire in his eyes, just like he preferred.

BOB took a delicate step toward the bend in the corridor. He could feel Albert there like the glow of a fire. No, he wasn’t fire. He was ice and cold. White Lodge stink all over him. But BOB knew these humans, and he knew that deep down in this goody-two-shoes was a spark. And BOB would make that spark burn, baby. Albert would go up like a bonfire by the time BOB was through with him.

BOB clapped a hand over his mouth. He wouldn’t giggle. He wouldn’t crow his victory. Not yet. A good strike had to come slowly, deliberately. Killing someone was a seduction: you had to win them over inch by inch until they begged for it. Until they burned in the perfect terror of a moment.

He stood at the corner. He could hear the rabbit-quick breathing. He took one last moment to delight in the anticipation, and then swung around the corner to find Albert’s back turned. “Boo,” he whispered.

It all happened in a flash: Albert turned, the taste of winter in the air like needles, and BOB saw a gun. It went off.

And went wide. A wicked dart embedded itself in the wall next to BOB’s head and he could smell it, pungent and awful. “Oh, Albert, you clever, vicious, perfect man,” he said. He looked up to see Albert fumbling with his gun, trying to load it. It was easy to slap the case out of his hand and send four glittering darts scattering across the floor. Albert stood, staring in horror at the ruin of his plans. This was better than BOB had dared hope for. He took a step forward, and Albert stumbled back.

“You want to play with fire, don’t you?” BOB asked.


	5. Chapter 5

\--------Twin Peaks, April 5, 1989--------

The conference room in the Twin Peaks sheriff’s office was starting to look cramped. Hawk was getting patched up in the hospital, and Harry had made certain Andy and Lucy were posted at his bedside. They were good people, and they had a baby on the way. Harry didn’t want them to have to think about all the things in Twin Peaks that could hurt that child. They probably had a good list going themselves after the pageant. He knew he did.

Big Ed sat at the table, eating a donut and nursing a cup of coffee, a lopsided bandage plastered over his hair. Harry hadn’t cracked his head like Big Ed had, and so hadn’t bothered with a bandage or a doctor’s visit (the doctors at their hospital were already overworked. Harry ought to send them a fruit basket). Sarah Palmer was there next to Ed. She’d come over to Harry’s house looking tired and ill. She’d taken one step inside his front door and come bolting back out again. She even got sick in his front bushes. Harry offered her one of those glasses of ginger ale. Least he could do.

Harry had brought the handset out to her and let her make a few calls. Then they’d headed for the station. Harry had brought her up to speed on the way, and he’d watched how the lines on her face got deeper the more he said. She clutched the handle of the door in a grip so tight he was damn glad he could control the locks in his car, just in case she got some crazy idea to go and hurl herself out.

When they got to the station they found not only a patched-up Big Ed waiting for them, but Major Briggs. Harry was more than willing to let the major take Sarah off his hands. The man seemed built to know just what to do in a situation like that: he patted her hand and escorted her inside with no fuss at all. Harry and Ed followed.

Ed barely got out a, “Surprise for you in the conference room,” when he walked in and found Margaret Lanterman sitting at the head of the table, her log perched in her lap and her eyes sharp and judgmental. She always made Harry feel like squirming. Had since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Major Briggs sat down next to her, as calm as a man who hadn’t been kidnapped and drugged to high heaven not two weeks prior. Sarah Palmer sat on her other side, a pale ghost of what she had been, but calmer with these two.

Harry sat down on the other end of the table with Ed. It wasn’t that he found those three people packed so close together to be intimidating, just seemed to be a sensible division of space. They were on the same team, after all, and they were getting damn close to admitting it to one another. It made Harry ache. Cooper would have loved this coming together.

Problem was, even with everyone who stood for the forces of good and right all sitting around his table for the very first time, they couldn’t come up with a damn thing to do about BOB. They’d spent hours talking, and it was making Harry itch. Major Briggs had told him that the White Lodge hadn’t been in touch, and that their ‘ways were ineffable’, which pretty much meant Harry couldn’t count on them for any sort of backup. Briggs had offered to go into the woods to try and plead their case, but had admitted that he tended to get snatched by the lodge more on their timetable than his. Harry told him to hold that thought, but didn’t want to send anyone out into those woods yet. Not after what had happened to Cooper.

And it _had_ happened to Cooper. Sarah’s reaction at his house had proved that Cooper wasn’t crazy, or just another person in Harry’s life that he didn’t actually know at all. Something had happened to him when he went to the Black Lodge, and that meant he could be saved. Harry could help save him.

Or he could fail another person he cared about.

Harry had already thrown out his own idea: find Cooper and restrain him until they could figure something else out. But Sarah had said in her low, raspy voice, “Didn’t Leland kill himself when you locked him up?”

She had a point. They couldn’t wait around to deal with BOB or he’d start killing again. But if they went off half-cocked Cooper could die. Best way to keep that from happening was to figure out a permanent solution, and to do it fast. Too bad no one could manage it.

He’d asked Margaret if she had any way of tracking BOB—had to correct himself and ask if the Log knew a way—but she’d told him that her Log only told her what it saw, and it hadn’t seen BOB yet. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound like it was going to be a lot of help.

After a while, Harry stopped talking. Major Briggs was talking to the Log Lady, and Ed was getting Sarah another cup of coffee. Harry had gotten up from his seat a while back, and was leaned against the wall, feeling useless as tits on a boar hog.

Sarah was saying the same thing she’d been saying for the past few hours, though she did pause to thank Ed for the coffee. “It was the same feeling,” she told him. “The same feeling that I sometimes still get in my house. It’s him. That man with the long, greasy hair. He’s back. He said he would be, and he is.”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded, just like he did every time she said it. It was like he was in a dream: each repetition of the same thing feeling new, with the old ones not quite remembered. They had to move on. They had to find a plan, but they had all offered up what they could and come up wanting. At least Sarah found the strength to keep talking.

“If he is,” Harry said, “we need a plan. And far as I can see, we aren’t any closer to one. Margaret, you said your log hasn’t seen anything. What about asking it what it already knows. Is there something it’s got that might help us?”

The Log Lady gave him a stern look. “It saw nothing,” she said, and curled over it.

He wanted to hit something. “So basically, we have no idea how to fight one of these things short of killing Cooper. The White Lodge isn’t talking, the Log isn’t talking, and the only person who is being helpful right now can only tell us what it is and not how to fight it.” When he realized what he’d said he held up his hands. “Sorry. Just … I’m exhausted. And we need a plan before Cooper does something he’s not going to be able to forgive himself for.”

“It won’t be him,” Sarah said. “Even if something happens, you have to remind him that it wasn’t his fault.” There were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t actually start crying. Harry was grateful. He didn’t know if he could handle crying at that point.

“Harry,” Big Ed said, “I don’t want to be the one to bring this up, but it might have already happened.”

“You mean Audrey.”

“Cooper was the last one to see her. Be a damn fine way to throw us off if he kept driving us to investigate her disappearance when she was already … you know.”

Harry could just imagine Audrey’s body washing up on a rocky shore, wrapped in plastic just like the others. “I’m not going to believe it until I see her body,” he said. “I can’t. And it doesn’t help our problem right now. Now, come on. One of us has to have an idea.”

“Someone could go back into the Lodge,” Major Briggs said.

Harry said, “The entrance Cooper used was time-sensitive. Even if we wanted to go in that way, it’s shut unless someone here can make the planets align again.”

Major Briggs looked thoughtful. “If there’s one way in, it stands to reason there would be others.”

“Okay,” Harry said, “that’s a good start. How would we find them? Are there other caves?”

No one had much to say about that.

“Anyone?”

Margaret shrugged. “My Log isn’t aware of the paths that lead to the Black.”

“I hate to admit,” Major Briggs said, “but this is beyond my expertise as well.”

Sarah just gave him a sad smile and a shrug.

“Even if you did get in,” the Log Lady asked, “who would go? You would have to have perfect courage in order to pass unharmed. Can you claim that?”

Harry wanted to say he could, but in his heart he saw Josie in those hallways, running from her screaming double, and he quailed. He hung his head. “I can’t.”

“Unfortunately, I’m barred from going,” Major Briggs said. “Or from interfering in any direct way. I can give you advice, but no more.”

“How do you know that?” Harry asked.

Major Briggs looked downright puzzled for a second, then smiled a melancholy sort of smile. “The same way I know many things, Sheriff. I know them, and I accept that I know them, and that has to be enough. But I can tell you that it is an unbendable policy, maintained for many centuries. I wish I could go against it, but I can’t.”

Harry didn’t bother asking Sarah. He’d heard enough from Cooper about Laura’s double to subject her mother to that hell.

Then Big Ed looked up, squared his shoulders, and said, “I’ll go, if we can find a way. Don’t rightly know what’s in there, but if it’s that or wait for someone else to get hurt, I’ll do it.”

Harry found himself fighting back a whole embarrassing bucketful of tears. If anyone in the room had perfect courage, it had to be Ed. It was an untested courage, and Ed knew it. He wasn’t like Cooper. He hadn’t faced fear and passed beyond it. Hell, he spent most of his life afraid of Nadine and too guilty to do much about it, but when it came to protecting people he cared about Ed was the most courageous man Harry knew.

“Or, ladies and gentlemen, we can do this through non-suicidal means.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open as Albert Rosenfield, large as life, strode into the conference room, followed by Denise Bryson on crutches. “Albert!” he said. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but we only just figured things out ourselves. I thought you were in Philadelphia. How the hell did you get here?”

“I brought him,” he heard behind Albert, and Audrey Horne, hair limp and greasy, stepped out from behind Albert.

“Audrey!” Harry said, hurrying forward. He wanted to clap her in his arms, just to be sure she was real and healthy, but he didn’t want to scare her. He held his hands in front of him, and said, “Audrey, we thought you were dead! How did you get away?”

“He let me go,” she said, and Harry could barely believe it. “He was … he acted like Special Agent Cooper every now and then when we met, and he let me go. Sent me to Philadelphia. I would really appreciate it if someone reimbursed me for my bus ticket. It was pretty expensive.”

Harry found himself laughing, in spite of the situation. Audrey was alive and kicking, and she had brought the cavalry with her. “Audrey, I am certain we could swing that,” Harry said. His mind was buzzing again, kick-started by the unexpected reinforcements and the relief that Cooper hadn’t managed to kill Audrey. “You know,” he said, “I noticed the same thing when I met him earlier tonight. Most of the time he wasn’t himself, but there were moments … do you think Cooper’s putting up a fight? Could that help us?”

No one seemed to have an answer for that, but Albert said, “Dare I hope that by ‘met’ you actually mean ‘restrained’?”

“No such luck,” Harry said, nodding at Big Ed’s bandage in lieu of explanation. He liked Albert a lot better than he used to, sure, but he didn’t want to hear his opinions on Harry’s failure. Better to change the subject to something more useful and move on. “You mentioned something about non-suicidal means. We’ve been in here beating our heads against a wall for the past few hours. I’ve actually thought about calling up Annie Blackburn at the convent for ideas.”

“Well, before we bring in the nuns, why you don’t try this?” Albert pulled out a bottle of something out of his pocket.

It was a bottle. Not much to look at, really; the sort of thing you got injectable medicine in. Harry picked it up and unscrewed it. He took a sniff, but it didn’t smell like much. He handed it to Ed, who didn’t even bother with it before passing it on to Sarah. She sniffed it too, and looked a touch confused for a second before relaxing. She passed it on to Margaret.

Margaret sniffed, and then nearly upended the stuff. Major Briggs caught the bottle before it could go over, but he winced too and held it out like it stunk. “What on Earth is this vile compound?” he asked.

“My log is so quiet,” Margaret said. She was shaking her head like she was trying to shake something loose. “It’s calling, but I can barely hear it. I have to leave—I have to—”

Albert took the bottle from Major Briggs and replaced the cap, frowning. Margaret and Major Briggs took longer than Harry liked to come back around. Albert looked at the room at large with that familiar contempt, and then turned to Major Briggs. “Care to explain the dramatics? I’d ask her, but I’m not sure how far I can trust someone with a pet log.”

“And I’m not sure how far I can trust someone who carries that abomination,” Margaret said.

“It’s not an abomination, it’s chemistry,” Albert said.

“Sort of the same thing,” Audrey muttered.

“Not helping our case,” Albert muttered right back.

Audrey smiled brightly and said, “Sorry, Agent Rosenfield.”

Harry felt like he was witnessing a bond made in some insane hell. The world sure better watch out if those two started spending time together on a regular basis.

“I’d like to hear what the major has to say, if no one minds,” Denise said. She limped over, and Major Briggs stood as soon as she got close, helping her into a chair with the sort of authoritative care that made it impossible to feel demeaned when he helped you. Harry hadn’t been certain about the woman at first, but she was a hell of a lady. Hell of a brawler too. He wondered if that was how she’d hurt her foot.

“We don’t want to offend anyone here,” Denise said to Major Briggs, “but we’ve just driven for nearly two days on little more than fast food and hunches. You seem like a man who knows what’s going on around here. Care to offer a few explanations?”

Harry was always amazed how certain men just seemed to melt under Denise’s charms. Major Briggs softened and said, “Since you asked so politely, every now and then I get impressions about this town. Nothing specific. I simply have a gut instinct that almost always turns out to be correct, possibly enhanced by certain extraterrestrial contacts that are unfortunately classified.”

That one made Denise pause and Albert to look inches from throwing his hands up in exasperation. Audrey looked entertained by the whole thing.

Garland Briggs must have been used to that sort of reaction, because he just kept talking. “Whatever the cause, I have learned to trust these impressions. To use them in aid of a greater good. When I smelled that liquid I had the impression of something entirely unnatural.”

“As I synthesized it in a laboratory, I can guarantee that it’s organic,” Albert said. He set his briefcase on the table and popped it. “I even sketched the molecules in the compound, for anyone who has both the interest and the understanding to look at it.” He unfolded a piece of paper, and Harry had to admit, the drawing was perfect, almost like it was pulled from a textbook. All the lines were perfectly straight and the letters perfectly written. He didn’t know what it meant, but it was pretty damn complex. Albert said, “These molecules are held in suspension, and though many of them are unknown to me, they can be synthesized. I did it.”

“Unknown to you sounds pretty damn unnatural,” Harry said, trying to stay reasonable.

“Although your appreciation of my breadth of knowledge is entirely warranted, even I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of every organic compound. But each molecule, however strange, could be manufactured with the proper reagents, and was. If you mean ‘unnatural’ to mean synthetic, it’s possible. One of these compounds does contain a crown ether, and I know those are engineered molecules. But if by ‘unnatural’, you actually mean impossible or magical, I have to disappoint. I hope this reintroduction to the world of practical science hasn’t broken any of you permanently.”

The Log Lady drew herself up, and even Major Briggs started to look angry. Albert really did have an amazing talent for pissing people off. Before the whole room could erupt, Denise once again stepped in, charming and professional. “What Albert is trying to say is that you all seem very frustrated. Maybe even stymied in your efforts to find a way to help Agent Cooper get over whatever influence he’s under. And we want to help. This drug, whatever it is, has already proven itself to help with this sort of thing, from what I’m told.”

“And we’re grateful for it,” Harry said, equally willing to defuse the situation. “But we’d also appreciate it if you told us how it was supposed to work.”

“It’s a wall,” the Log Lady said before Albert could get a word in. “My log says it acts as a barrier, standing between the log and myself. If that was in my blood, I might not be able to hear the log at all.”

“That must have been what I felt as well,” Major Briggs said. “It would prove unsurprising if the White Lodge had left a mark upon me after my last disappearance. I must have experienced the sensation of that connection being blocked.”

Sarah looked up, all hungry eyes and desperation. “I don’t know what the two of you are talking about, but when I smelled that I felt at peace for the first time in a very long time.”

Harry knew she wanted it, and he couldn’t blame her. “If it’s not too toxic, we’ll see about maybe getting you some.” Albert gave him a look that said it wasn’t about to happen, but didn’t say anything. Harry was about to try and soften that blow when what everyone was saying sunk in. “Oh, holy smoke; that’s the compound Philip Gerard made. The one he was using to keep MIKE unconscious.” The future didn’t feel so bleak anymore. In fact, there were possibilities all laid out in front of them. “If we can get this into Cooper we can knock BOB out, get Cooper back. It’s not a perfect fix, but it could go a damn long way!”

“We could load it into tranquilizer darts,” Ed said. “Shoot him like a bear in a tree.”

Albert said, “Not many darts, unfortunately. I was only able to synthesize a small amount of the compound.”

“It’ll be enough,” Harry said. “It has to be. Now the question is how we go after him.”

“We find him and we storm the place,” Ed said. “Get him down before he knows what hit him.”

“He’s too smart for that,” Denise said. “I don’t know about all this supernatural talk, but I do know Cooper. He’ll have an exit strategy, and if we come in force he’ll use it.”

“What about bait?” Audrey asked.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Harry said. “The only times BOB slipped up when he was in Leland were the times he was trying to kill someone.”

“I could go,” Audrey said. “I’ve gone skeet shooting before.”

“No,” said Harry at the same time as Ed, Major Briggs, Albert, Denise, and even Sarah. Audrey frowned but let the matter drop.

Harry wanted to say he could go. Hell, Albert was looking at him like he expected Harry to pipe up and offer, but he couldn’t. He’d failed badly when BOB and he had squared off, and though he’d like to say he wasn’t about to get fooled twice, he couldn’t. What if the next time BOB offered him Josie, or even just her spirit, and meant it? Could Harry turn that down?

He didn’t know. And that meant Harry couldn’t do it. Even if it wasn’t the Lodge, the same principle applied: he had to have perfect courage to face BOB and not be swayed, and he didn’t.

Albert looked confused, then suspicious. “Sheriff?” he asked, and the distance that single word implied made Harry’s skin crawl. Albert liked him well enough, sure, but that word meant he didn’t trust Harry. Maybe he hadn’t since the mess with the forensics on Josie.

Harry didn’t want to explain, but it was the fastest way to knock himself out of the running and move on. And time was damn well important in this case.

He nodded toward the hall, and Albert followed. Once the door had shut behind them Harry said, “He showed me Josie.”

“What?”

Damn, he was going to have to do this the hard way. Not in front of Ed, who believed the best of him, but in front of Albert, who could pick apart his faults and would. This was why he hadn’t wanted to explain earlier. “BOB,” he said. “When he was in my house this evening he wanted me to let him go. I told him there wasn’t a way in hell that was happening, so he showed me Josie. Told me I could save her.”

Albert was wearing the sort of pissed off look he hadn’t seen since Doc Hayward was keeping him from doing what he thought was his job. “And you fell for it.”

“I knew it was probably a trap,” Harry said. “I knew he was probably lying. But if there was even a chance that he wasn’t … I couldn’t just let it go.”

“So you let him go instead.”

“I’m not proud of it!”

Albert’s eyes tracked over his face, and Harry bore up under the dissection of his failings. Least he could do after everything. “You’d do it again,” Albert said after he was done. “In spite of the extremely high probability that he would never give her back—could never give her back because she is dead, you would do it again.”

“I’d like to say I wouldn’t,” Harry said, “but feeding my own damn pride won’t help Cooper. So I can’t say one way or the other, which isn’t any better.”

Albert sounded a little less cold when he said, “The honesty is appreciated, Harry, and I can even accept the conundrum you face, much as I would like to call you an idiot and tell you to pull yourself together.”

“If I could, Albert, I would. It isn’t that easy for most of us,” Harry said, and couldn’t stop the edge in his voice. He was guilty, and letting BOB go had one-hundred-percent been the wrong call. But he didn’t like getting his mistakes shoved in his face any more than the next man.

Albert held up a hand before they could descend into an argument. “As I said, I accept that. But it does leave us without the best man for the job, unless you can recommend someone else with law enforcement training, knowledge of the area, and healthy mental resistance.”

“You volunteering?” Harry asked.

Albert looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “I may have implied it to you already, but let me make this clear: I am a pacifist. I don’t even carry a gun, and I have never discharged a weapon in the line of duty. I would prefer to be the option of last resort.”

“Fair enough,” Harry said, and they made their way back into the conference room. Everyone was looking at them like they expected a miracle, and Harry hated to let them down. “I can’t,” he said.

“Damn,” Ed said. “I guess I could, but I admit I’m not partial to guns myself. Been a long time since I even went hunting.”

Harry remembered taking Ed to the range back when he was a new Bookhouse Boy. He could brawl his way out of any bar in the state, but he hadn’t been able to hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol, no matter how often he practiced.

And there were Nadine and Norma to consider. When Ed was the only option to go into the Black Lodge Harry could rationalize what might happen to him, but now? Harry had seen first-hand what BOB could do with the memory of a loved one. He didn’t want to see what Ed might get put through.

Ed had a big heart. If Norma was in trouble, or even if Nadine was suffering he wouldn’t be able to turn his back on it. He couldn’t just shut down the part of him that made him the decent man he was, and focus on his job.

Harry didn’t want to admit that in a room full of people, so he stuck with the gun as his reason for saying, “Sorry, Ed. Being able to shoot well is pretty much a requirement of this job.”

Ed nodded, accepting Harry’s explanation as calm as you like. He’d never had any ego about his abilities or his lacks. A damn fine man, indeed.

Harry’s eyes moved to the next candidate. Denise gestured to her foot. “I’d love to, but stealth becomes a problem in this boot, to say nothing of pursuit.” She frowned. “Or flight, I suppose. I’d like to say I wouldn’t have to, but I do play bait well.”

Albert rolled his eyes. “You’re a dish.”

Major Briggs looked deeply troubled. “I would like to do this for you. I truly would. But as I said …”

“Policy of neutrality,” Harry filled in. He wanted to shout at Briggs that sometimes rules had to be broken. Particularly rules that came out of nowhere, and froze you into not helping your friends.

Margaret said, “My log says that the Lodges cannot act against one another directly, nor can their representatives. The other option is a war of attrition not to be contemplated.”

“Which leaves us with me,” Audrey said. “I’ve probably gone shooting more recently than Mr. Hurley, I’m not barred like Major Briggs, and I can sneak just fine.”

“You can’t,” Harry said. “You’re not trained for this, Audrey.”

“Who else is there?” she asked. Audrey always was good at throwing down a challenge. She always acted like she not only expected to win, but knew it was inevitable.

Harry looked at Albert and asked, “You said something about an option of last resort?”

Albert looked pale, but he also looked like he’d been expecting that. Hell, he’d probably done the math as soon as Harry had counted himself out. Albert muttered, “Why did I know this was going to happen?” Then he looked Harry right in the eye and said, “Fine. If I’m the only person here without enough of a personal life for BOB to manipulate, how can I refuse?” His smile was a bitter thing. “I’m going to need some tranquilizer darts, and a gun. I’d prefer to deliver this drug from a distance.”

“We’ve got what you need,” Harry said. “Even have a pistol model, so you won’t have to drag a rifle around with you.” He looked at Albert, and knew what he had to say. It was his job, no matter how much he wished it wasn’t some days. “You know that if the two don’t walk out with Cooper drugged to the gills I’m going to have to tranq you both and lock you up indefinitely, right?”

Albert waved that off. “Sheriff, if I don’t manage to get this drug into Cooper’s system I have no illusions about walking out of there at all. If we’re both walking out, I think it’s safe to say it worked.” He frowned. “But have a round of tranquilizers ready, just in case.”

“On it.” Harry kept a decent stock of the stuff, for whenever wildlife got where it shouldn’t. It might not be as good as Albert’s drug, but it’d drop a bear. He figured it would drop an average-sized man just as fast.

Planning the logistics of tranquilizers, guns, and personnel kept him from thinking too hard about the other implications of what Albert had said. Harry knew he couldn’t be the man inside. Had even opted out himself. But that seemed a lot less tactically sound and a lot more selfish when he realized what a good chance Albert had of dying.

But this was the plan, and Harry couldn’t think of another. The best thing to do was to make sure everything he could see to was done right.

Before Harry could leave to get into the gun cabinet, Denise asked, “So how do we find him?”

Albert looked at Harry. Harry looked at Major Briggs. Major Briggs looked at Margaret. Margaret looked at her log, leaning in to listen. Then she straightened up and said, “My log has not seen him.”

Well, damn.

“And I believe,” a voice like buzzing insects said from the door, “that is where I come in.” Margaret Lanterman clutched her log to her chest and huddled over it, looking up in alarm. Major Briggs shot to his feet and was only stopped from stepping forward by Denise’s hand on his arm. Sarah Palmer went grey and clutched at her hair.

The One-Armed Man walked into the room.

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

There was a blank moment of horror when Albert realized he hadn’t managed to shoot Cooper. It had been point-blank range, and somehow his hand had twitched and then … then he was finished. Albert Rosenfield wasn’t the sort to give in just because a situation appeared dire, but the cold and rational part of him had known that he would only ever get the one shot.

His fingers shook as he tried to reload, only to have the case knocked out of his hand. He looked up to see Cooper standing too damn close and stumbled backward, trying to get some space to regain his composure.

“You want to play with fire, don’t you?”

He’d thought he’d be ready, that it would be like an autopsy: he could define all of the appropriate emotions he ought to have to seeing Cooper like this, then tuck them away to maintain his professional objectivism. But he couldn’t compartmentalize. The smile stretching sickly across Cooper’s face sent him spinning into a place between familiarity and the unknown, where his certainty that this was a microorganism to be fought off—that there was any pat scientific explanation he could apply and reassure himself—fell away, leaving Albert breathless and terrified.

He saw Cooper’s grin grow, his eyes flash with victory. This was what he was after: fear. That was why he’d used Josie against Harry. It was why he’d toyed with Audrey. Albert was no expert on Twin Peak’s own brand of crazy, but fear seemed to be a recurring theme.

It was that knowledge that finally allowed him to stuff some of his emotions into the box where they belonged. He straightened up, looked the thing wearing Cooper’s face straight in the eye, and said, “Try me.”

Cooper lunged at him, a scream like crashing cars tearing itself from his throat, and they both hit the ground. All of Albert’s training, years old and largely unused, scattered. He found himself struggling in a way that he would have found embarrassing if he had enough brain cells to commit to the feeling. If he could get to one of the darts he might be able to manually inject it into Cooper if he could get enough velocity behind it. Hell, if he could get his hand to his pocket he had a Taser and pepper spray, either of which should slow the human body considerably no matter what ghost or microorganism was currently occupying it.

If he stayed focused he could avoid the fear. If he stayed in control of his own reactions he could avoid giving Cooper exactly what he wanted. He managed to land an open-handed blow to Cooper’s ear that he was decently certain had ruptured the eardrum. He wanted to feel proud of himself as blood started to trace down the side of Cooper’s face, but all he felt was sick.

Something flashed, too quick to track, but it scored across his arm, white-hot and then viciously painful. The body, particularly the untrained body, reacts to pain in very particular ways—the animal parts of the brain wresting it from the hands of common sense. Albert would have liked to believe he was above that sort of thing, but he yelped and instinctively clapped a hand tight over the cut, dropping his guard.

Cooper’s weight came down on his gut. Albert bucked and twisted, trying to shove him off. If he didn’t break the hold—

The edge of a straight razor nestled under his laryngeal prominence and Albert went utterly still. Even his mind, which he could rely on at the worst of times, stopped doing anything besides feeling the metal against his skin and flashing through every slashed throat he’d dutifully catalogued in his career: gaping open to expose muscle and trachea. He damn well hoped Audrey had cleared out, because he had no desire for her to see that.

The blood dripped off Cooper’s chin and splattered in droplets on Albert’s cheek. “Not bad,” Cooper said, and it didn’t even sound like Cooper anymore. It grated and chittered like an engine driving the sound. “Gotta love medical training, don’t you? And hey, it’s nice to know that even if you don’t believe in violence, violence still believes in you.”

Albert focused on the eyes, blotting out the rest of the face. It was somehow easier to get pissed off that way. “You have to know you aren’t getting out of this,” he spat. “Even if you get through me, this hotel is surrounded.”

“By goody-two-shoes Harry and his faithful, slobbering pack? Come on, Albert. You’re supposed to be the genius here. Why didn’t he come instead of you?”

Albert refused to answer. He might question the good sheriff’s state of mind, but there was no way in hell he was about to betray that confidence to the man with a razor to his throat.

It didn’t seem like Cooper needed the confirmation. “Harry wants to be a white knight so bad I can taste it from here. And he knows that the next time I show him his girlfriend in the Lodge, he’ll make the same choice. Face it, I’m not only going to kill you; I’m going to walk out of here and kill someone else. Maybe sweet Audrey, or maybe Annie and all her Sisters.” He paused and then said, “Oh, I should probably mention that I am going to kill you. Just so we’re on the same page.”

“If you’re going to do it, damn well do it and stop talking my ear off.”

“Albert, Albert, Albert. No wonder you so rarely date if that’s your attitude. You have to savor the moment. For example …” Albert felt a white-hot flash of pain, and for a moment he was certain that BOB had simply changed his mind. But there was no jet of arterial spray, just a burning pain and a trickle. “It’s called foreplay,” BOB said.

Somewhere in Albert’s head there was an FBI hand-to-hand trainer shouting at him, but the words didn’t make sense. He tried to focus, but the razor was sawing through his tie and then popping the button on his collar, and his terror was an animal thing, uncontrolled and keening, very nearly drowning out more rational thoughts.

_Come on, Rosenfield! You may be the nerd in the room, but could you stop making it so obvious?_

He brought up his knee and rolled sharply. Cooper made a startled noise that sounded all too much like himself before he went tumbling. They scrambled to their feet at the same time. Albert felt a jolt of pain in his side, but he ignored it to get his hand into his jacket pocket. The Taser fit neatly under Cooper’s chin.

The discharge sent Cooper reeling, but he didn’t fall. Albert couldn’t believe it. A Taser wasn’t a stun gun. It wasn’t a deterrent that used pain. It couldn’t be ignored. It interrupted the synaptic activity at muscle fibers, causing the human body to collapse. But apparently the world was a cruel place, and inhabiting spirits could keep a body upright even in the face of neuroanatomy.

Albert staggered back against the wall, panting and lost. His hand was pressed to the cut on his throat, but BOB had graciously avoided all the major arteries so the bleeding wasn’t bad. The feeling of tracheal cartilage under his fingers, on the other hand, was disconcertingly awful for a man who handled tracheal cartilage on a regular basis.

Cooper advanced on him steadily. “There’s that fire,” Cooper said. “I knew I could find it if I dug deep enough. You want to put a little pressure on that side, though; I might have gotten a bit overenthusiastic.”

Albert watched as BOB approached. He could try to run, but his side was tingling and he was getting dizzy. And honestly, he wasn’t going to give BOB the satisfaction. He straightened up as much as he could. “I’m not going to play your game,” he said.

“Don’t freeze up on me yet, Albert. We were just starting to have fun.” Then BOB did something surprising. Cooper’s eyes narrowed, and he sniffed at Albert. “Or are you freezing? Because right now you’re feeling hot as hell. Hot as Lodges. Are you more mine than I thought you were? You stink of ice and love, but you burn. What are you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Albert said.

“You don’t, do you? You’re a mystery, and I am going to crack you wide open.” Albert could feel the razor rest against his shoulder. “Think we should start with a Y-incision, doctor?”

And then a voice said, “It’s a little rushed, isn’t it?” and Albert felt the terror he thought he’d finally fought down well up all over again.

Audrey Horne stepped out from around the corner, her gun held in shaking hands leveled at Cooper. “That’s it, huh?” she asked, and Albert couldn’t figure out what she was doing. She seemed afraid, but she was smiling too. “All that build up, and then it’s just torture? Sort of a let-down.”

“Audrey, get the hell out of here!” Albert shouted at her, but she didn’t pay any attention to him.

Cooper flicked the blade around to face Audrey. “I thought I’d have to hunt you down, you gorgeous thing, but here you are like Chinese delivery. To what do I owe the pleasure of this delightful double-billing?”

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” Audrey said.

Cooper shook his head. “Someone likes to play at being a mystery.”

“Who’s playing? You see me, but you have no idea why I’m here, do you?”

Albert started edging toward the darts. He didn’t know what Audrey was playing at, but if she could keep Cooper distracted then he could get to one and end this.

“What makes you think I care?” Cooper asked.

Audrey said, “You came after me, remember? And I was friends with Special Agent Cooper. Just your type. I know all that. I know that you would love to kill me, just so you could poke at him. But I’m still here.”

“I get it!” Cooper crowed. “This is the part where you finally get to be a hero, isn’t it? Where Audrey Horne takes charge of her own life and takes down the big, bad monster with nothing but a tranq gun and a cocksure grin. And all you’ve got is tranquilizer, isn’t it? I’d smell it if you had pulled Albert’s little trick. Hey, Albert,” Cooper said. Albert froze and Cooper gave him a waggle of his finger as he kicked the syringes farther from his reach. “Naughty,” he said, “but I like that in a man. Before you go in for your big heroic moment, why don’t you tell the other hero in the room how well that Taser worked on me?” Audrey’s expression didn’t waver from that doll-like smile. “So shoot me, sweetheart, and let’s start this dance.”

Audrey held her ground. Albert knew he had no chance to get to the darts before Cooper was on her, so he decided that, in lieu of something intelligent to do, he might as well do something heroic.

He jumped. Cooper moved like a striking snake, twisting and throwing Albert to the floor. He hit hard enough he heard a crack and curled around the wound in his side. Oh, God, there was blood. There was too much blood, by his estimation. He looked up, dazed, to see BOB still stalking toward Audrey.

“So, what’s it going to be?” he asked. “What’s your move, hero?”

Audrey aimed the gun at Cooper, then said, “You still don’t get it. I’m not here to be a hero.” She moved her aim to the side and down. Albert heard the sound of rushing air as she pulled the trigger and felt the dart hit him in the chest. The breath was driven from him, and Albert stared up at her in shock. Cooper was looking at Audrey like she was a wonder.

She smiled at him, all the crazy that had been bubbling under her surface coming to the fore. “See, you keep asking people if they want to play with fire.” She looked down at Albert. “And you know what? I think I do.”


	6. Chapter 6

\--------Twin Peaks, April 6, 1989, shortly after midnight--------

The conference room was buzzing, everyone poised. Audrey held her breath, looking at the strange, one-armed man standing in the doorway. Mrs. Lanterman was curled over her log, Major Briggs was on his feet, and Mrs. Palmer huddled into her chair and held onto the arm rests so tight her knuckles turned white. Sheriff Truman had gotten all tense when the man came in, and Mr. Hurley was taking his cues from the sheriff. At least Denise and Agent Rosenfield seemed as out of the loop as Audrey felt.

“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Lanterman demanded. Audrey had always thought she was sort of funny with her log and her pitch gum. Not the sort of person you laughed at, but the sort of person everyone talked about behind her back. The sort of person everyone kept getting worried Audrey would turn out like. All of a sudden, Audrey wouldn’t mind turning out like Mrs. Lanterman, who stood strong and imposing, facing off with the one-armed man in the doorway. She looked dangerous, like something out of a cave painting.

The man said, “Peace, sister. I am here because you asked me to come.”

Audrey was pretty certain the confused looks from everyone in the room meant that no, no one had invited this guy. And that no one would have wanted to. She couldn’t explain it, but his voice and his movements reminded her of some sort of thick tar spill, slow but unstoppable. She wasn’t creeped out like Mrs. Palmer or angry like the Log Lady and Major Briggs, but even she could tell that something about this guy was ninety degrees wrong.

“I don’t know who you are,” Major Briggs said, “but I’m certain I wouldn’t have invited you.”

The man didn’t say anything to that. He looked at them each, skipping over Major Briggs and the Log Lady. He stared at Mrs. Palmer, who stared back. Audrey wondered if she saw the same things Audrey did, or if the one-armed man looked like something entirely different to her.

“He was near you,” the man said to Mrs. Palmer. “Yes, very close, but his mark on you is fading.”

“You knew him?” Mrs. Palmer asked. She sounded steadier than she looked.

“MIKE helped us track BOB down the last time,” Sheriff Truman said.

“You made the compound,” Agent Rosenfield said.

“I?” MIKE asked, looking just as dangerous as Mrs. Lanterman. His teeth were bared, and there was a weird, pulled-tight grimace on his face. “I did not. The man Gerard, whose body is also mine, procured it. If it were in my power, it would not exist in this world.” Then he relaxed and looked more like a middle-aged guy and less like a monster, though his teeth gleamed in the sort of smile that made Audrey worried he might bite. “But it seems that even something as hideous as that might have its uses.”

“That remains to be seen,” Agent Rosenfield said.

“It does indeed.”

Denise was still looking confused, and even Audrey felt left out of the conversation. Sheriff Truman took pity and said, “Far as I can tell, he’s been hunting BOB for a long time.”

“BOB and I are bound together,” the man called MIKE said. “I can feel his presence. I felt when he left this world those weeks ago, and now he is back, eager for fun.” His head turned slowly toward Audrey, and his eyes reminded her of Cooper’s in the Savings and Loan. “You have met him, yes?”

Audrey nodded, and felt her throat go dry.

“He has marked you,” MIKE said. Audrey was vaguely aware that he was walking toward her, but his voice had dropped in register to something hypnotizing and horrible. “He has set your foot upon the threshold, and there is one who screams on the other side.”

Audrey saw both Sheriff Truman and Denise start forward, but Sheriff Truman was far away, and Denise was slowed down by her crutches. Agent Rosenfield was closer, and stepped between them. “Back off,” he said, low and serious.

The man’s eyes moved from Audrey to Agent Rosenfield. Audrey released the breath she’d been holding when his attention finally moved away from her.

MIKE looked at Agent Rosenfield the same way he’d looked at Audrey, with a sort of intensity that shouldn’t be turned on people without them bursting into flame or something. “And you are the one to stand, yes?” he asked. “Yes. You will do. Has it told you?” It looked to the log in Mrs. Lanterman’s arms.

“Told me what?” Agent Rosenfield asked.

MIKE had a strange, distant smile that never reached his staring eyes. “The White Lodge says so little, preferring to watch. Is it any wonder that madmen in the past would fall supplicant to the Black? Those rewards, those reactions, are far more tangible.”

“My log tells me that they are always fleeting, and always end in pain,” Mrs. Lanterman said.

“That is not incorrect,” MIKE said.

“What was it going to tell me?” Agent Rosenfield prompted.

Mrs. Lanterman looked sullen, but whispered to the log for a few minutes. She straightened up and said, “There is nothing my log has to say that’s pertinent to this situation.”

MIKE’s laughter rumbled through the room, leaving Audrey feeling dirty. “The White Lodge does not wish to claim its own?”

“You know it can’t!” Mrs. Lanterman said. “Not if—” She curled up over her log again and stopped talking.

MIKE hadn’t stopped laughing. “You know, don’t you?”

“You aren’t as clever as you think you are,” she muttered, but didn’t look up.

“If we’re through with the cryptic conversation, maybe you’ll finally tell me what you’re talking about,” Agent Rosenfield said.

MIKE said, “If the White Lodge refuses, who am I to spoil the fun?”

Agent Rosenfield looked like he wanted to argue, and Denise looked like she was ready to throw both MIKE and Mrs. Lanterman out of the building. Audrey didn’t understand what these Lodges were, or what they could claim, but so many people in the room did. What did that mean? Audrey had thought she’d delved pretty far into the darkness of Twin Peaks. She’d seen her father at his worst, seen the Renaults and the drugs and the killings. But this was something else. These were all of the things Agent Rosenfield hadn’t wanted to talk about. This was Sheriff Truman, who seemed so down-to-earth, buying into what they were saying like it wasn’t even strange. Like he’d heard it before. The rabbit hole Audrey had stumbled across was deeper than she’d guessed, and the Wonderland she’d been dumped into far stranger.

But Audrey was adaptable. She saw which way the wind blew, and she made certain she came out on top. If there were not only things in the dark, but gods and ghosts and monsters in the woods and hiding under people’s skins, she would learn to deal with them. She wouldn’t be the one to be shocked, or disbelieving. She’d stay quiet. She’d see everything, and then she’d adapt.

Sheriff Truman asked MIKE, “Can you at least help us find BOB again?”

“I know where he is,” MIKE said. “I have been tracking him since his return, and I have run him to ground.”

“You’ll show us?” Mr. Hurley asked.

“I will,” MIKE said, “but I have a condition: I will go with you, and you will leave BOB to me.” He nodded toward the case in Agent Rosenfield’s hand. “That will have its uses later.”

“No offense,” Denise said, “but if what you’re saying is true, if you can somehow ‘sense’ this person you call Bob, wouldn’t he be able to sense you?”

“Oh, he can,” MIKE said. “I hear him even now, his mutters and his schemes. And he hears me. He hears when I reach for him, and he runs.”

“Then you can’t go,” Denise said.

“Denise,” Sheriff Truman said.

“I appreciate that this man might know where Cooper or Bob or whatever he wants to call him is. I appreciate that he may even have information about curing Cooper that no one else here has or even could have. But I draw the line here. Cooper is very smart, and very good at his job. If he runs, we’ll never find him again.”

“That, Agent Bryson, will only occur if he knows I am coming,” MIKE said.

“How are you going to stop him from noticing?” Major Briggs asked. He stepped a little closer to Denise, who gave him a small smile of gratitude.

“I will tell you,” MIKE said to Agent Rosenfield. Then he turned to Audrey. “And you.”

“Why her?” Denise asked.

“As I said, she is marked.”

“That’s not exactly an explanation,” Big Ed Hurley said.

“It’s okay,” Audrey said. “It’s not going to hurt me to listen.”

“Well, I’m coming too,” Sheriff Truman said. “I might not be going in, but I am going to be the man outside, so I damn well better know what you’re going to say, just supposing Denise is right.”

MIKE looked at Sheriff Truman, then approached him. Audrey almost thought MIKE was sniffing him. “You have met him as well, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you failed.”

Sheriff Truman looked like he might punch MIKE, but he just said, “Yes.”

MIKE smiled and said, “Very well. Do any others expect to come with us, or shall we go?”

“I’m going,” Denise said.

“And what business have you?” MIKE asked.

“Doubt,” Denise said.

MIKE laughed and dipped his head.

“Where are we going?” Audrey asked.

“A holding cell will suffice,” MIKE said, and turned to go. Audrey saw Sheriff Truman speaking to his deputies and Big Ed. Denise was listening in, and then caught Audrey’s eye. “I don’t like this,” she said to Audrey, “and I don’t trust our new friend. Anybody who comes in just in the nick of time almost always turns out to be bad news.”

“If it helps, I’m pretty sure no one else here trusts him either.” Audrey looked to Major Briggs, who was helping Mrs. Palmer stand up. The Log Lady was still huddled in her chair, hunched over her log and watching everyone with the sort of look that school teachers used to give Audrey when they caught her falling asleep in class.

But Audrey didn’t see anything to do other than hear MIKE out and try to pry all the information they could from him. He knew where Special Agent Cooper was. He might even know how to fight BOB, and even if he didn’t they still had their original plan and the compound Agent Rosenfield had spent so much time recreating.

She found herself walking down a hall, following Sheriff Truman and flanked by Agent Rosenfield and Denise. It felt like she was a suspect, or a convicted criminal. That was only heightened when they walked out of the cozy leather and carpet of the offices and into the cinderblocks, concrete, metal, and dull-colored paints of the cells. There was no one there. Funny, after everything that had happened, that there shouldn’t be a single person held accountable. Ahead of her MIKE chuckled, and she had the weird belief that he’d Audrey’s thought and found it funny.

MIKE walked into one of the cells, and both Sheriff Truman and Agent Rosenfield hesitated. “You picked that one on purpose, didn’t you?” Sheriff Truman asked.

“I did,” the voice echoed from inside the cell. “The whole room reeks of him, but you could not keep him. You had only a physical barrier, and BOB is a flighty thing.”

“So give us the ability to do it differently,” Sheriff Truman said.

“You already have that means: me.” Audrey entered the cell along with the others to find MIKE sitting on the chair in the center of the room. He looked comfortable, but distracted. He kept inhaling too deeply, and Audrey was now convinced he was sniffing. “You wish to know how to find BOB, confront him, and bring him to heel, yes?”

“Well, we aren’t here to look at your smiling face,” Agent Rosenfield said.

MIKE laughed, and for a second it wasn’t the deep chuckle, but the sound of metal tearing apart. It made Audrey feel nauseous. Even Denise looked disturbed. “Yes, you are the one to do this. Your defiance is powerful, but if you face BOB alone you will die.”

“And you’ve got a way around that?” Agent Rosenfield asked.

“I do,” MIKE said.

“Are we going to play twenty questions, or are you finally going to drop the mystery man act and tell us?”

“You won’t like it.”

“I didn’t really expect to.”

MIKE’s eyes moved to Denise. “You’ll try to deny me, despite your disbelief, because a part of you does believe, and I can smell that fear.”

Denise crossed her arms and said, “I’ve seen a lot of charlatans in my job. I’ve seen a lot of people who prey on the desperate. And so far I haven’t seen a single thing from you that couldn’t be done by a good cold reader who knew the local legends.”

MIKE seemed fascinated. “And what of the reactions of those affiliated with the White Lodge?”

“The very nice army major convinced he’s been abducted by aliens and the woman who talks to a log? As far as character witnesses go, that’s pretty weak.”

“You see in yourself a continuum of identity,” MIKE said, “with great acceptance for the unknown and unexplained. You do not feel the need to define yourself, and yet you react to this place by attempting to define it, and force it into your own world view.”

“I don’t know if your attempts to equate my own personal experiences with your efforts to convince me that you’re a supernatural being are more insulting or ridiculously funny.”

MIKE looked at Sheriff Truman. “And you? Do you believe?”

Sheriff Truman only hesitated a second before saying, “After what I’ve seen and what I’ve been through? Yeah, yeah I guess I do.”

“And you?” MIKE asked Agent Rosenfield.

“I don’t have enough data to draw a good conclusion one way or the other,” he said. “My personal inclination is to blame mass delusions brought on by some local environmental toxin, but I have also witnessed things that strain that explanation. Honestly, though, I don’t think it matters. If you have good intelligence about Cooper’s whereabouts or how to get him back, you can believe that you’re Napoleon Bonaparte for all I care. Just tell us what we need to know.”

MIKE nodded. “You are a creature of the White Lodge, even if they will not claim you outright,” he said to Agent Rosenfield, who sure didn’t look like he understood that. “You define yourself by love and order. It acts as a beacon around you. That light would be enough to hide me.”

“So you think that you’ll just walk in next to him?” Denise asked.

“Oh no. Not walking. Not I. But buried within you, a tiny flame in the ice? I could slip in.”

“You’re talking about possessing him,” Sheriff Truman said.

“A temporary stay,” MIKE said. “I would not find your form to my liking for a great length of time.”

Agent Rosenfield stood, looking at the floor, and Audrey had to suppress the urge to take his hand. He looked shaken. “Acting on the supposition that you could even manage this … ‘possession’, how much control would I retain if I said ‘yes’?”

“Control entire,” MIKE said. “To avoid BOB’s wandering eye, I would have to be a flame barely present. If I were to make my presence known he would flee, just as Agent Bryson fears.” He looked sharper, more focused. “When you draw close to BOB, even the thought of me would be enough to inform him of my presence.”

“I have a good amount of practice at compartmentalization,” Agent Rosenfield said.

“Could you truly stamp out even the thought of me?” MIKE asked. When Agent Rosenfield hesitated, he said, “There is another way which would guarantee you could not accidentally betray yourself.”

“You’re going to make certain he doesn’t remember you,” Sheriff Truman said. “Just like BOB did with Leland.”

“It is an ability we share. You would proceed with your mission as it was originally conceived, Doctor Rosenfield, remembering nothing of my arrival or our discussions. And then, when the time was right, I would emerge to confront BOB, and to save your friend.”

“And then you’d go?” Agent Rosenfield asked.

“If BOB is gone, I would have no business in this world. I would leave you, yes,” MIKE said, the word drawn out in a long hiss. Audrey wanted to tell Agent Rosenfield that it was a terrible idea. That MIKE could hide in him and never leave. That something that caused all those people to be that scared shouldn’t be let in. She looked at Denise, who looked like she was teetering between demanding this stop and not being able to believe any of it. She looked at Sheriff Truman and he was gripping one of the bars of the cell tight in his hand.

“Do it,” Agent Rosenfield said.

Before anyone could say anything there was a rushing sound, like all the air in the room was being sucked out. Audrey covered her face as something hit and scraped across her face, and for a moment she was back in the explosion—one minute leaning into the lobby of the Savings and Loan as far as she could, and the next she was being thrown into the far wall. The metal door came down on her, protecting her from the falling masonry. She heard the same ringing in her ears; saw Pete lying, half-buried in the rubble. The words ‘he took me fishing in the moonlight’ echoed in her head. Then the rubble cutting into her face became buffeting wings. Audrey screamed, only to realize that her fingers were tangled in her hair and her fingernails were digging at the stitches in her scalp. She lowered her hands and saw blood under her nails. Denise’s hand caught her elbow, and Audrey leaned against her. Denise was breathing heavily. Her eyes were wide, and her wig was askew. She was shaking.

Agent Rosenfield was sprawled on the floor, and MIKE was slumped back in his chair. Sheriff Truman fell to his knees next to Special Agent Rosenfield and called out, “Albert?”

“Is he all right?” Audrey called out, her voice shaky.

“I don’t know,” Sheriff Truman said. “My first aid training didn’t exactly cover this.” He slapped at Agent Rosenfield’s face. “Albert?” he called again. “Come on now. Wake up!”

Audrey chewed at her fingernails and edged toward the tableau. “Agent Rosenfield?” she asked.

Those eyes opened, milky white and horrible. Audrey gasped and fell back against Denise, who was rigid and staring. “That’s not possible,” Denise said.

A lazy grin stretched across Agent Rosenfield’s face, the same as MIKE had worn. He closed his eyes, and when they opened they were the right color again, but still not his. He wasn’t tired or frustrated. The slope of his back was all wrong when he sat up and he stood with the same tar-slow grace MIKE had shown. “No need to fret, Agent Bryson,” he said in that same buzzing drawl. “He is quite well, and sleeping soundly. I do not banish my hosts to the Black Lodge as some do.”

“Cooper is in the Black Lodge?” Sheriff Truman asked. He sounded so afraid.

“He is,” MIKE said with Agent Rosenfield’s voice. “And time passes in different increments there. The longer we delay, the longer he will be lost in the darkness. I cannot imagine the unspeakable things that might happen to an agent of the White Lodge in that place.”

“I’d rather hear that from Albert, if it’s all the same to you,” Denise said. Her eyes were still wide, but she was forcing herself to stand up straight. Audrey did the same.

“And you will,” MIKE said. “But I must have a moment to find my place. It has been a great number of years since I moved into a new host. It is disorienting. I would also appreciate it if you prepared your White Lodge friends before Agent Rosenfield comes back to himself. It would be unfortunate if he were to suspect what we must keep from him.”

Sheriff Truman looked frustrated but said, “Fine. I need to get my people ready for this, anyway. Denise, you want to find out where we’re going, then make sure he’s totally gone by the time we head out? The last thing we need is BOB making a run for it because he picked up MIKE’s scent.”

He left. Denise said, “Any time now.”

MIKE just smiled at her.

Then there was a groan from the cell. Audrey looked over to see the one-armed man lifting his head and looking around. He seemed shocked. “Where am I?” he asked, his voice shivering. He was awkward, and reminded her of Pete Martell. It made something catch in her throat.

Denise hurried over to him. “Take it easy,” she said. “You’re okay. Do you need to go to a hospital?”

“A hospital?” the man asked. “I don’t know. Where am I? Where’s my case?”

Audrey felt a hand come down on her shoulder and she whirled around. MIKE was looking at her, the same intensity in his eyes, and it was much worse to see in a familiar face. He settled Agent Rosenfield’s coat around her shoulders, a mockery of what they’d shared on the bluff. She felt something hard press against her ribs. Audrey peeked into the inside pocket of the coat and saw the brown handle and strange-looking barrel of a gun.

“Do not let them know you have this,” he whispered into her ear. “I borrowed it from their equipment cabinet through means I do not wish to elaborate. They should not miss it.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“The same darts, but a different mixture,” MIKE said. “A solution made for sleep, to be applied to unruly animals. The spirit of that animal drops away into dreams, and anything hidden beneath would come rushing in to fill the vacuum.”

“You want me to …”

“BOB would not suspect you. He would not stop you. He is in the large structure. I think you call it … hotel.”

“BOB’s in the Great Northern?” she whispered back.

“Yes. And you have a master key. Hide that away, too. There will come a time when you require both. There will come a time when he fails. When that happens, you must not.”

Then he collapsed. Audrey heard Denise shout, but she was already calling out, “It’s okay! He told me where Special Agent Cooper is. You have to get the one-armed man out of here before he wakes up.”

She heard the quiet, quavering voice from the cell. “I have a name.”

“I’m sure you do,” Denise said. “But right now, we have to get you to a better place. You don’t want to be in this cell, do you?”

“Not really.”

“Come on, then. Let’s get you a donut.”

Denise shepherded the one-armed man past Audrey, and their eyes locked. Denise looked hard at the coat around her shoulders. Audrey felt like a heel, but met Denise with all the wide-eyed innocence she’d perfected as the daughter of Benjamin Horne. Denise frowned, but kept moving.

Audrey pressed a hand against the gun in Agent Rosenfield’s coat. She wasn’t sure what MIKE had meant, but she would be there. And if Agent Rosenfield did fail, she’d make sure she didn’t.

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

It seemed like the only possible thing to do. He’d failed, just like MIKE had said he would. And MIKE hadn’t woken. For the longest time, Audrey had thought she would have to shoot Agent Cooper, or just buy MIKE enough time to get out, but what he’d said about the Taser made her realize that she’d had it backward all along.

She was so glad she didn’t have to think to keep her customer service smile on. Just like it was easy to say, “You still don’t get it, do you? I’m not here to be a hero.” Audrey felt the gun’s recoil travel up her arm, saw the dart hit Agent Rosenfield in the chest. The look of horror and betrayal on his face was awful, and all she wanted to do was tell him that she was sorry, that she had to do it or they’d both be killed.

But the customer service smile stayed on, and she looked at Agent Cooper like she wasn’t afraid of anything. “See, you keep asking people if they want to play with fire. And you know what? I think I do.”

Then he was in front of her, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t run. She stood as solid as she’d ever been—solid as the mountains—solid as Agent Rosenfield, as the razor traced her cheek.

“You’re going to get burned,” he said.

“After all this build-up, I’d hope so.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You’re good! No, you’re great! Oh, Audrey, if I didn’t really like these new digs I’d be tempted to take you for a spin and see how much fire you could handle.” Then the razor was back, and pressing against her throat. “But unfortunately for you, I do like these new digs, and I learned a few lessons about girls who were too smart for their own good from Laura. You’re hiding something from me. I see it behind your lying smile.”

His eyes tracked across her face, but she kept that customer service smile in place. It couldn’t take that long, could it? She just had to keep him busy for—

“No,” BOB said, realization blooming across her special agent’s face. “Not even he would be that crazy.”

He started to turn, and Audrey saw Agent Rosenfield twist to his feet. “BOB,” he purred.

“MIKE,” came the answering growl. For a moment, Audrey watched them stand perfectly still, and then they both came at one another, fast as striking birds, twisting like snakes. She couldn’t tear her eyes away, even as she couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing.

\--------Another Place, No Time at All--------

Albert staggered through a red curtain. He didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there. He remembered facing BOB, and then Audrey had shot him. He’d passed out.

Was this death? If it was, all those religious types were going to be severely disappointed. He looked at the floor, which seemed to be an endless zigzag of black and white. Beyond the curtains, dark shadows moved.

“Where do I know this place from?” he asked softly. There was movement in the corner of his eye. His head turned in the direction, but there was nothing there. He went to the spot he thought he’d seen the movement. The curtains were swaying slightly, revealing a small opening.

Albert ducked through and found himself in a roughly-partitioned room. There was nothing there, but a small man stood in the center in a red suit. “You should not be here,” he said, his voice odd, distorted and thick.

“Wasn’t exactly my idea,” Albert managed.

“Yes it was,” he heard behind him, this time a woman’s voice. He turned around to find a familiar girl wearing a black dress. Her hair had been tangled when he’d last seen it, but now it flowed about her face in blond waves.

“Laura Palmer?” he asked.

She tapped the side of her nose.

He tried again. “Where am I?”

“The waiting room,” Laura said.

“Another place,” the little man said.

A third voice whispered into his other ear, “The threshold.” Albert turned, and Madeline Ferguson stood as Laura stood, dressed the same, the only difference between them her dark hair.

“The Black Lodge.” This voice was right behind him, and Albert turned sharply at the sound of that voice. Dale Cooper stood before him, an old man with a strange tie. He had the same distorted, thick voice as the others, and his expression lacked any spark of recognition.

The terror that should have come with the realization of where he was got shoved to the side when he saw that face. “Cooper?” he asked.

The old man regarded him with some confusion. “I know that name,” he said.

“Of course you do; it’s yours. Coop, come on, you can’t have been here long enough to forget your name.”

“I have been here forever,” the old man said.

There was a sound like a kettle whistling beside him, growing louder and louder. Albert glanced toward Laura, and found her white-eyed and screaming. He jumped away from her, all instinct and no finesse, and Madeline’s fingers curled into his shoulders like knives. He turned and she was white-eyed and screaming as well. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little man jittering and dancing, his giggles joining the screaming. Albert turned, and the old man still looked confused, even resigned.

Albert grabbed his hand and hurried back through the curtain. Cooper looked pained as he passed into the corridor. “I should not be here,” he said. His voice sounded clearer, less garbled. Albert turned back to him, and his age suddenly appeared to be less natural and more put on. He reached out and, after a moment’s hesitation, caught the edge of something adhered to that face. It felt like skin, but stretched like some sort of rubber.

“Hold still,” he muttered, and carefully started to peel it away. It stretched, but didn’t break. To his shock, the rubbery layer connected with Cooper’s hair, and the hair itself peeled away, each hair laid over another, darker hair. Albert peeled the whole of Cooper’s face away. A more familiar face was underneath, younger. Still, Cooper appeared unaware, even dull.

Albert laid his hand on the knot of the strange tie. “You know what I said about forms of fashion suicide?” he asked. Cooper didn’t respond. Albert pulled the tie from Cooper’s throat, unknotting it, stripping it off, and then throwing it away. As it left his hand, Cooper shuddered and closed his eyes. When they opened again, that terrible blankness was gone, replaced by confusion. “Albert?” he asked, his voice clear and undistorted.

Albert sagged. “Oh, thank God.”

Cooper’s voice was urgent. “Albert, this is a place of great darkness. Why are you here?”

“I’m not actually certain of that,” Albert said. There was something he ought to remember, some dark spot in his memory … “Oh, son of a bitch. MIKE.” He gripped Cooper’s arms. “Listen to me, I know this might be hard to believe, but you’re here because your body is being possessed by BOB.”

Cooper shook his head, and Albert didn’t like the way his face blurred when he did. “That’s not possible,” he said. “I passed the test. I was free to go.”

“So why are you still here?” Cooper looked like he might panic, and Albert worried what panic might do in a place like this. He snapped, “Cooper! If you could please remained focused and as free of hysterics as possible, I would very much appreciate it.” He softened his voice and added, “It’s been a week since you went into the Lodge and came back with Annie Blackburn.”

“A week?” Cooper asked. “That’s impossible. It’s been years.”

Albert wanted to sympathize with Cooper’s horror, but they didn’t have the time.

He went on, “I’m telling you this because even as we speak, I would guess that our respective bodies are trying to beat one another into either catatonia or a massive internal hemorrhage. The faster we can get out of here, the faster we can help.”

“Our bodies?” Cooper asked. He stepped away, looking suspicious. “Albert, what did you say about MIKE?”

Albert didn’t like to admit to rash decisions, but in this case it was difficult to deny. “We were trying to find a way to save you when MIKE arrived. He offered to deal with BOB so long as I took him with me. At the time, we didn’t have a better plan.”

“You consented,” Cooper said, looking at Albert in unwarranted horror.

“Conditionally,” Albert corrected him. “Don’t take me for a complete fool. He promised that once he’d taken care of BOB his business in our world would be over, and he’d leave me.” Normally those words would send him into fits of scientific explanation and qualification, but he was in a red hallway just outside of a room filled with screaming, white-eyed crazy people. Somehow it didn’t seem like such a far reach to believe in possession.

Cooper’s horror hadn’t lessened. “Albert, I have been here a long time. I’ve heard many things, and while most are lies I believe I have gained some degree of insight into the nature of this Lodge and its beings.”

“Good for you.”

“There must be another available body,” Cooper said, “or the current host must be dying. These are the only two conditions under which a Black Lodge spirit may leave.”

Albert realized his mistake. He’d made MIKE guarantee he’d leave, but he’d never made any mention of Albert’s condition when he did. “He’s going to let me die,” he said, low and bitter. The shadows in the hall deepened around them. “Damn it. He’s going to kill both of us.” He blinked. “And I actually thought he would keep his word. I’m definitely the idiot in this instance.”

Cooper’s grip tightened. When Albert looked up he saw Cooper straighten vertebra by vertebra, much of the weight and depression of the Black Lodge sloughing off him. “You’ve risked your life coming to save me, Albert. I’m not about to sit and wait for you to be trapped here along with all the other hosts.” His smile seemed forced, but it was entirely Cooper’s. After BOB’s knife-grin on Cooper’s face, it was a welcome sight. “We’ll find a way out of here, Albert. And then we’ll see how we can turn the tides.”

“You’re the one who’s been here the longest.” Years, if what he said was correct. Albert didn’t even want to imagine what those years had been like, or how they might haunt Cooper even if they managed to escape. “Where’s the exit?”

Cooper’s smile faded. “It won’t be easy. The corridor is endless, Albert. The rooms constantly shift. There is no map for this place, no logic in any of the changes. If there is a room containing a way out, we would only locate it through the most random of chances.”

“Then we’d damn well better start looking, and start increasing those odds.” When Cooper didn’t seem convinced by Albert’s precision application of perseverance and hope, he went on, “I’m just a scientist, Cooper; you’re the visionary. And that makes this far more your territory than mine, but it seems to me that we’d be a lot more effective actually searching the rooms for an exit than we would be standing around waiting for it to find us.”

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

It wasn’t like any fight Audrey had ever seen. There were no punches or kicks. Not even a little hair-pulling. They were rolling around on the floor, sure, but the only thing they seemed to be doing beyond that was to attempt to get a grip around one another’s throats. She couldn’t tell if they were squeezing or not, because their fingers and faces were blurring.

It had started out subtly enough, but Audrey had known even then. Faces didn’t do that. There weren’t supposed to be things that peeked out from behind eyes and screamed unnatural things out of natural mouths. She couldn’t tell who was winning, or how one of them would win. Would she know? Would one of them die?

What if Agent Rosenfield died, and only BOB remained?

Audrey crept forward. The darts from Agent Rosenfield’s tranquilizer gun shimmered like four diamonds on the floor. She kept an eye on MIKE and BOB, but they weren’t paying her any attention.

People ignored Audrey Horne at their own risk. Her fingers closed around one of the darts. It had a tuft of red feathers on the back of it, and she couldn’t figure out how to inject it by hand. There was no obvious plunger, just a metal ball at the far end. Would that push the compound out if she just stabbed it in, or did it have to be going faster than she could move her arm?

Agent Rosenfield’s gun was much closer to MIKE and BOB than the darts were. Audrey crept forward. She froze when they rolled over the gun, but they still paid her no attention. She inched closer and closer. They rolled over the gun again when she was inches away.

BOB met her gaze and started to laugh. His hand shot out. It closed around her ankle. Audrey toppled from squatting to sitting when he knocked her off-balance. Her hands shoved under him, reaching for the gun. MIKE used the distraction to wrap his hands tightly around BOB’s throat. BOB continued to laugh, but it had turned snarling, his face twisted in a grin matched by the frown on MIKE’s face.

BOB shook like there was an earthquake, and MIKE’s fingers slipped just a little. BOB’s free hand caught him under the chin and squeezed tight.

Audrey’s own hand closed around the gun and jerked it free. The barrel was already hinged down and ready to be loaded. She shoved the dart into the chamber. With a jerk, she reset the barrel and the gun looked right. She had a wild moment to wonder if she had to cock it, or if there was some sort of safety. BOB’s hand tightened on her ankle. At this distance she could see long, matted hair on his head. She could see his mouth gaping open even while his teeth ground together. Audrey pressed the gun to his chest and then pulled the trigger.

BOB jerked. Audrey scrambled backward, fighting against his grip. There was a wind rushing in her ears, the Savings and Loan was exploding around her—had it ever stopped—she was trapped in One-Eyed Jack’s and the heroin spiraled through her veins. There were wings beating at her face. There was a pressure in her chest. She stretched out, feeling blindly for another dart. It was hard to tell whether the feathers and metal under her fingers were real or not, and more than once her hand closed around nothing. Then something was solid. It didn’t slip away or melt. It didn’t scream when she touched it. She tried to lift it up, but it seemed heavy.

It seemed attached to something—a shoe. She had her fingers tangled in the laces. Audrey looked up to find an old waiter standing over her. She knew him. He was the man who her father refused to fire, no matter how senile he was. She had asked once about him, and her father had acted as though she hadn’t spoken. Granted, that wasn’t surprising for her father, but looking at the old man, sitting down with arthritic care next to her, made her wonder if something quite different had been going on when she’d asked.

He smiled at her, the same absent smile she’d always seen on his face. “You really ought to close your eyes,” he said.

His hand came down across her face, blocking her vision. She heard screaming, cries of people or animals or things not quite so well-differentiated. She clapped her hands over the wrinkled, thin skin covering her eyes, and through the screaming she heard the old man humming to himself. She was pretty sure it was ‘Daisy’.

“You know what you need?” the waiter asked. “Warm milk. Always helped me get to sleep. Helped others too, so I hear.”

To her surprise, Audrey did feel tired. She could hear the screaming. She knew she had to help, but her limbs felt like lead, and the old waiter’s hand was so warm over her eyes. He was humming ‘Daisy’ again, and Audrey drifted.

\--------Another Place, No Time at All--------

Cooper shivered, and Albert stopped when he did. He looked over to find Cooper’s face was screwed up in concentration. “Albert,” he said. “I believe there is a way out.”

“You just realized this now?”

“I find it difficult to explain,” Cooper said, “but I am suddenly taken by an intense certainty. Are you willing to follow me?"

“I don’t have any other plans,” Albert said.

Cooper led them down the hall, around the bend and into the exact same hall they had been in before. He hesitated, then kept walking. They went through four more identical halls. Every now and then Cooper would stop in front of an opening in the curtains, but he wouldn’t go in. Finally he stopped for a long time in front of one. “It’s this one,” he said. “This is the way out.”

Albert followed Cooper through the curtain, and found himself in a room lined with people. They were frozen in strange poses, and Albert recognized several of them: Laura Palmer, Madeline Ferguson, Leland Palmer, Windom Earle, Josie Packard, and—

“Agent Desmond?” Albert asked.

“Don’t acknowledge them,” Cooper said. “Just keep walking toward the corner.”

“But—”

“They are beyond our help. We keep walking, or we join them.”

Albert did as he was told, muttering, “At some point you are going to tell me how you know all this.”

Cooper’s voice was thin. “I’d prefer not to think about all the years I’ve spent here, if I can.”

The line stretched on, moving from familiar faces to those unknown. It was an endless line of people, or statues of people. Their ranks grew tighter and tighter. What had seemed like a short room seemed to grow endlessly long.

And then it wasn’t. They were standing in the corner, next to a tattered rip in the curtains. Cooper stepped through and Albert followed.


	7. Chapter 7

\--------The Great Northern, April 6, 1989--------

Cooper opened his eyes with a gasp, and for the first time in a very long span of memory (or had it only been a few hours ago and the blur of Harry’s house?), he found himself staring up at a wooden ceiling over a very familiar shoulder.

“Albert?” he asked. He remembered the Lodge, searching with Albert through its endless halls and weighted down by a terrible fear—

He sat up, clutching Albert’s shoulder. Surely he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. They had both walked through the door, both escaped. They had to.

Albert let out a groan, and Cooper gave in to the imperative to hug him. He knew Albert preferred to abstain from physical displays of affection, but he hoped that he would make an exception in this singular instance.

What he wasn’t expecting was the pained hiss his actions earned. He pulled back and saw blood at Albert’s side. The memories crept back, a badly taped-together film reel, but they were still his hands, his fingers that had done such violence to his friend. He saw the razor lying mere feet away.

Albert pressed a hand against the cut in his side. “It’s all right,” he gasped. “I don’t think it perforated the abdominal cavity. We’d smell that.” He looked up at Cooper with a tight smile. “Where’s Audrey?”

The rush of Audrey coming to the rescue, of her struggling with BOB at the end, of the gun in her hand rushed back into Cooper’s memory. He felt a flutter of fear. It wasn’t like her to remain quiet, particularly after such events. He cast about and found her lying on the floor, apparently unconscious. Cooper reached out, but found he couldn’t approach her, for fear that he would only make it worse. What he—BOB had done to Albert would leave scars he would bear for the rest of his life and Cooper would remember for his, but what he had done to Audrey, what BOB had come so close to doing in the Savings and Loan didn’t bear contemplation.

Albert straightened up with his hand still pressed over side. “Dammit,” he said, and scooted across the floor to her. “Audrey?” He checked her over. “She doesn’t seem to be injured. No contusions. She might have taken a knock to the head.”

He looked over, and Cooper understood the implication: BOB might have hit her. He couldn’t remember it. And BOB would remember knocking Audrey unconscious. It would have been important to him. “Not as I recall.”

“Pulse is steady and her breathing is good.” Albert lifted one of her eyelids, then the other. “Pupils are even and respond to light.” Then she blinked, and Albert jerked his hand away from her face.

Audrey’s eyes fluttered open, and she said, “Hello, Agent Rosenfield. I had the strangest dream. You were there.” She looked over at Cooper, who offered her as warm a smile he could muster that still held no trace of any sort of danger. “And you.”

“Thanks, Dorothy,” Albert grumbled. “I take it from your chipper attitude that you weren’t knocked unconscious. What? Fight not interesting enough for you, so you just had to lie down and take a little nap?”

“It was the waiter, actually,” she said. “He covered my eyes when the owls came, and then he talked about warm milk and hummed ‘Daisy’. I must have fallen asleep then.”

“Wait,” Albert said. “The old guy? Senor Droolcup? I make allowances for his senility, but how did he get here? And where did he go?”

Audrey smiled at him. Cooper was painfully relieved to see that she could still smile. “I don’t think that’s his name.” She thought about it. “Although I don’t think I actually know his name, or if he has one.”

“Some mysteries,” Cooper said, “are not destined to be answered.”

She sat up and looked at him. “Is it you?” she asked. She looked at Albert then. “Both of you?”

“I can’t feel MIKE,” Albert said, “and I have a somewhat fractal but clear memory of him leaving. A sort of tearing feeling. But if you’re still worried about it we could have that lady with the log check us out. She seemed to recognize him immediately the last time.” He shifted, wincing and tightening his grip on his side. Audrey’s eyes went wide, but Albert waved away her concern and then focused his attention on Cooper. “What about you?”

Cooper opened his mouth, but found he had no such memories of claws or decisions. He tried to sift through the mess of memories that were his own, yet not his own. He remembered BOB’s fury at being tricked, his desperation to either escape or kill MIKE once and for all. They had been locked together with hands around one another’s throats and spirits tangled and gouging. He remembered Audrey scrambling close, brave and frantic as she loaded the tranquilizer gun and fought against BOB’s hold. Against _his_ hold.

“I know that my apology means very little in the face of what you’ve gone through, Audrey,” he said, “but I am so terribly sorry for what BOB did.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Audrey said. “I knew it wasn’t you. Even in the Savings and Loan, I knew. And I’ve never blamed you.”

Cooper attempted to take some comfort in that, but then he saw Ed and Hawk fall under his hands, and Harry’s slow-closing wounds torn open again. He saw the skin of Albert’s throat parting under the razor blade. He saw fear in the eyes of so many people he cared about, and it was extremely difficult not to see fault in his inability to prevent BOB from using his body for such violence. He remembered Annie—

She was gone. She had seen BOB before anyone, and run back to the convent where he couldn’t find her. Cooper wanted to go to her, to tell her that BOB was being dealt with, but there was no guarantee, was there? And even if there was, would that sort of news be any help to her, or just ease Cooper’s own sense of responsibility for her second retreat from the real world?

Albert broke into his thoughts. “Sarah Palmer said the same thing, by the way, right before we left to find you. She wanted us to pass on the message that no matter what memories BOB gave you, they aren’t yours. I think she can speak on that specific topic with some degree of expertise, don’t you?”

Cooper mustered a nod. Instinct and emotion were not so easily mastered, but he had no intention of burdening Albert further with his own self-recrimination.

He touched the bruise on his chest. The dart had come dislodged at some point. When Audrey had shot him, BOB had wavered. His grip had slackened. For a moment, his hold on Cooper had been nothing but gossamer. He’d looked up.

And MIKE dove.

Cooper knew his face must register the shock he felt in that moment of perfect understanding. Through a meditative technique he had learned several years ago he listened closely to his heartbeat, to his thoughts, and under them, throbbing, was the war.

He tried to remain calm, to keep the fear at bay, but he could not manage to keep his voice entirely steady when he said, “I believe we didn’t give MIKE the credit he deserved. He told you he would leave you, Albert, and he did.”

“Something’s wrong, though,” Audrey said.

“He could not circumvent the laws of the Black Lodge,” Cooper said, “only bend them. And so, when BOB’s hold on me was weak but I was still a viable host, MIKE jumped into me.”

From their matching looks of horror, Albert and Audrey understood the implications. “BOB’s still there, too,” Albert said.

Cooper could not help but confirm their fears. “He is, and they are locked in a battle with no foreseeable end. But their voices are far away, only noticeable if I concentrate very hard.” He offered a weak smile as some sort of reassurance. “Mr. Gerard’s compound works very well. If I was not as in-tune with my own being as I am, I wouldn’t even be able to perceive their presence.”

Albert didn’t appear reassured. “So my idiotic decision didn’t cure you, it got you doubly possessed by spirits that want to murder one another. What the hell is that going to do to you?”

Cooper had no good answer, but said, “To be fair, their struggles do mitigate their hold on me. If either attempted to control my thoughts or actions they would open themselves for attack.” He laid a hand on Albert’s arm. “I am in control of my actions, Albert. And with the drug you synthesized I can hardly feel them. As to long-term effects, that may well be a question which requires a long-term search for solutions. Twin Peaks itself may hold many of the answers we would need, or perhaps Tibet.”

“Any excuse to visit Tibet, huh?” Albert gave Cooper the sideways glance he only used when he was uncertain of his reception. “The drug is an injectable, Cooper, and will likely have to be administered on a rigorous schedule. Looks like you get to make like a diabetic and shoot yourself up.”

“It is a small price to pay.”

“And maintain that schedule. I mean it. Can you guarantee that you’ll take a break, no matter what vision-quest you’re on or mountain you’re climbing to inject yourself?”

“The safety of my friends and my own soul are at stake, Albert. I can keep a schedule.” He looked more closely at Albert, and couldn’t attribute all his paleness to blood loss. Cooper approached the subject carefully, knowing all too well how easily Albert’s pride bruised. “Would you prefer to stay here and keep an eye on me?”

Albert scowled. “While I appreciate your dedication to preserving our lives and your own spiritual stability, you also have the disconcerting tendency to wander off after something that fascinates you and forget everything else. I believe in taking sensible precautions.”

Cooper smiled. In Albert, he had a true friend. “I would welcome the company,” he said.

“Gordon’ll be over the moon. He’s been hoping to send me into the field for years.” Albert shifted a little, and the cut on his throat began to bleed. Cooper saw a flash of cartilage and was struck by the memory of inflicting that, of Albert pinned under him.

“I’ll give you a discount on a room,” Audrey said.

“No offense meant to your glorious heap of firewood, but after tonight I have no desire to sleep here. I’ll find another hotel.”

“This is the only hotel in town,” Audrey said. “Except for the one out by the highway where the truckers stay. And all the rooms there smell like someone barfed in them. A lot of someones.”

Albert looked around them at the scattered darts, at the speckles of blood, and at all the tiny details that would be apparent to his forensic sensibilities. “Wonderful,” he said.

Cooper felt something settle in him. He couldn’t call it resolution, because such things only came with time and a great deal of effort. But he could call it a brief moment of contentment. He was out, the Black Lodge a looming block of memories, but no longer surrounding him with screams and distorted reality. BOB and MIKE were there too, the pain of their struggles settling as a dull ache in the back of his skull. But his friends were there, and he wouldn’t hurt them. That was enough.

He closed his eyes. “I fear that you’re in no shape to check in yet, Albert,” he said. “And I don’t know what ill effects you might have suffered, Audrey, but I think it might be prudent for both of you to see medical professionals.”

“Right back at you,” Albert said. “The ear alone will require treatment; maybe surgery.”

“And who knows what sorts of things possession might do to you,” Audrey said. “Don’t worry; you won’t have to eat the hospital food. I’ll sneak out and go get you a pie.”

With Audrey on one side and Cooper on the other, they managed to get Albert standing. The wound on his side started to bleed again, and Cooper pressed his own handkerchief over it without a word. Albert’s own hand was busy pressing on the cut to his throat. It would scar, Cooper knew. It would be a reminder, even if he learned not to associate it with guilt, of the two monsters in his head.

He had no idea how it would work. Never in all his years in the Lodge had he heard of such an arrangement. In many ways he thought MIKE to be a genius: using the drug foisted upon him by his host as a method through which he could not only finally confront his enemy, but guarantee they were trapped together forever.

And now Cooper faced an uncertain future, and blocks of memories it would take a very long time and a great deal of effort to confront and come to peace with. The three of them left the scene behind them. They remained silent for the ordeal that was walking down the stairs, each of which was fraught with peril. Yet somehow they made it down one flight of stairs, and then two. Then one more, finally, and they were on the ground floor. Cooper looked at the lobby doors, and thought of the people gathered outside. If the Log Lady was there she would know his predicament before he could say a word. And if she told the others … he could scarcely imagine the reactions of his friends from this town, but he couldn’t believe they would be overwhelmingly positive.

But to back down would be to give in to fear. He would apologize to Harry. He would thank all the people who had come together to help him find his way back to the world. He would apologize to all of them, as well, even if every one of them told him he had nothing to apologize for. He would move past the fear of the warring spirits in his mind. He would learn to own what guilt was his and move past that which he’d accidentally picked up. And he would either find a better solution, or he would learn to live with what he had. His friends had come for him, and neither Albert nor Audrey were leaving.

“Come on,” he said, and Audrey reached out to unbolt the door.


End file.
